Advanced Theory
by Dualism
Summary: There were very few things in life that Sora hated. Riku was one of them. [RS]
1. A Blossoming Virgin's Aesthetic

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything; plot is loosely based on Sugai Aya's _Happy Play; _one line borrowed, with changes, from Twig's _A Long, Hard Road; _chapter title from the Ouran OP.

**Notes: HEAVILY REVISED **sorry sorry totally sorry if you preferred the original version but I...really really didn't, and ultimately that's what I have to be true to. Changes of note: epithets; hopefully a little less dubcon; a little more focus on health, relationship and mental and otherwise; characterization. not that this has anything resembling proper characterization, let's be real here, but.

**Warnings:** Somewhat dubious consent; a relationship that doesn't really begin (or end) healthily; misunderstandings galore!

* * *

**Chapter One: A Blossoming Virgin's Aesthetic**

There were very few things on this good green earth that Sora disliked, fewer that he hated, and only one or two that he outright loathed.

Sora hated wasps. You couldn't really fault him, because he was deathly allergic to the little buggers, and broke out in hives if he was so much as _tapped _by said insects. He hated bullying, because Sora had spent the first years of his life playing heroes and knights, and he'd never outgrown the optimism and hope and fierce protectiveness that rose up in him every time he saw someone in need. He was also vaguely aware that he hated feeling helpless, feeling upset, and feeling mean. Since Sora was only a college sophomore, however, and since he'd by and large lived a very nice life, none of these dislikes played a large part in his thought processes.

No, when all was said and done, there were very few things in life that Sora hated. Riku was one of them.

"-it's almost entirely about innocence. He's merging the names, using the sort of language a kid would use, which probably makes it a little creepy when you take into account that _goat-footed_ isn't, religiously speaking, a good thing."

In the back row of the small classroom, Roxas slumped further into his seat and bumped his head against the desk. "Class could have ended fifteen minutes ago," Roxas groaned. "Why won't he shut up?"

"'cause some people love to hear their own voice," Sora said. He sat up, in the manner of many a college student who'd just realized they were five minutes away from totally drifting off. "Geez, I've got no idea what was possessing me when I signed up for lit."

"You like English," Roxas whispered, shooting a furtive glance at the teacher. "Wasn't your fault you didn't know he'd be here."

"Should've gotten Tidus to give me his schedule," Sora said. "Then I could be outside, enjoying this lovely spring day, instead of stuck in this smelly old-"

"Sora? Is there anything you'd like to share with the room?"

Sora flinched and decidedly did not meet Professor Zexion's eyes. He chanced a glance at Roxas; his blond twin had his nose buried in the textbook, a small smirk pulling up his lips. "Not really," he said slowly. "I was just…uh…thinking about the capitalization of the _m? _And how it also emphasizes the fact that this guy is an adult, and so his being there isn't a good thing? Which I guess agrees with what Riku said about the relative innocence, or corruption thereof, of the thing."

Zexion raised his eyebrows in the unimpressed way that professors always did when they knew you'd definitely sparknoted a piece, but apparently decided that calling him on it wouldn't be worth it. Sora grinned at Roxas, and slid back down in his seat.

Most of his friends had their classes in the afternoon. Most of the university, hell, had their classes in the afternoon. Sora didn't. He liked getting the worst (or best-some of his classes (at least the Riku-free ones) really were pretty great) over quickly, and then spending the rest of the day alternating between picking away at homework and relaxing in the shade. But what that meant was that he didn't get to see his friends as often as he'd like, because he spent most of his mornings in the lit building, where the classrooms were crowded and the heaters were blasting and where Riku was sitting, watching him carefully, not ten feet away.

He'd never believed in instinctively disliking someone the first time they met. He'd never really had to. But that had been before Riku.

It wasn't that Riku was cruel, although he could be. It wasn't that he was proud. Sora had never really known what it was, especially given that he'd always had the vaguely discomfiting sensation that, if things had been a little different-if one of them were quieter, if one of them knew how to bow-they might have been friends. But this was the truth: they'd met a year ago, when Sora had been a freshman and Riku had been a little too good at math, and the moment they'd locked eyes Sora's stomach had clenched and he'd known, deep down, that he would never be able to look at this person without wanting to scream. It was a fact of life: the sky was blue, a burger was greasy, and Sora hated Riku. It was undeniable, and Sora could no more contest it than he could wake up with a normal head of hair.

Sora thought it was destiny. Roxas insisted it the keyblade wedged up Riku's ass.

Whatever the reason, it was giving him an ulcer. Everywhere he _looked_, there was Riku, and this was stranger than one might have thought. They were in college. In one of the larger ones, actually. They moved in different circles; Riku had no right to be as omnipresent as he apparently was.

Beside him, Roxas blinked one bleary eye open to look at his twin brother. "You look upset."

Sora dropped his chin onto the pillow of his folded arms and shook his head. "Not really."

"He's doing it again."

"So don't look at him," Sora said.

"Easier said than done," Roxas said. "He won't freaking stop, geez."

Sora sighed, pushing his face into his arms so he wouldn't have to look up. "The worst thing," he mumbled, voice muffled by his skin, "is that he doesn't even do it like a creep. He just _looks through you. _How the hell am I supposed to pick a fight with someone who looks like he barely notices you're there."

"As if you would pick a fight."

"I might," Sora said. "I'm getting tired of feeling like I don't exist."

Roxas laughed. "Yeah," he said, voice full of layers Sora couldn't quite parse. "I don't really think that's what the problem is."

Sora had already opened his mouth to ask what on earth Roxas meant by that when footsteps drew near, and a voice above them said, "In case you haven't noticed, class is over."

The twins jerked simultaneously upright. Zexion stood there, looking at them like they were the cause of every ounce of suffering in his life. "I'm flattered that you both enjoy my class enough to try and extend it for an extra five minutes," he said, "but unlike the two of you,_ I_ actually have a life."

Sora grinned and grabbed his book bag, Roxas clambering to his feet beside him. "What life? You're at _our_ house 24/7."

"He's right, you know," Roxas said. "You're life consists of nothing but teaching, eating, and doing dubiously legal things to our older brother."

"Demyx told us to invite you over tonight, by the way," Sora continued, beaming. "He's cooking. And the construction is done. His room is now sound-proof. The pair of you can drop your pants whenever you want, and it won't bother us any."

"His bed _is_ still broken, however," Roxas said thoughtfully. "I thought that only happened in pornos."

"We carried the coffee table in, though. We figured that was enough horizontal surface for you two."

"If the two of you are done discussing my sex life," Zexion said, with a bit too much calm to be quite normal, "I'd appreciate it. I do, as the pair of you so aptly reminded me, have an appointment with your brother and his coffee table. So if you'd be kind enough to leave?"

"No problem, Zexion," Sora laughed, slinging his bag over one shoulder and making after Roxas, who was already halfway to the door and chuckling quietly to himself. "We'll see you at dinner."

Zexion nodded, but his eyes narrowed slightly. "Of course," he said. "But before you leave, Sora."

Sora aimed a glance at Roxas and then turned back. "I was speaking with Vexen a few days ago," Zexion said. "He said that you were barely passing Chemistry."

Roxas aimed a sharp glance at his brother. Sora shrugged, looking a little bit to the right. "Yeah," he said. "I'm trying harder than I was before. I've got my grade up a handful of points. But yeah."

"I could find you a tutor," Zexion said.

Sora and Roxas glanced at each other. "I'd appreciate that," Sora said after a pause. "I am struggling a bit. I guess it couldn't hurt to have someone help out?"

"Well," Zexion said, gathering his papers, "Riku, apparently, has been doing quite well-"

"No."

Zexion ground to a halt, staring at the two young boys who'd just spoken in unison.

"Sora doesn't really get along with Riku," Roxas said. When Zexion raised his eyebrows, Roxas shrugged. "There's really no reason. Sora just clashes with him."

Zexion studied them curiously, eyes traveling slowly between the brothers as if he knew there were undercurrents there he wasn't seeing, and wasn't particularly sure whether he wanted to know more than he didn't. "All right," Zexion said finally. "We can find someone else. I've a few ideas, including one or two you both may actually get along with. May I ask around?"

Sora nodded, switching his book bag from one shoulder to the other. "Sure. Just tell me at dinner tonight, and I'll meet with whoever you want. "

And with a final wave, the brothers disappeared down the hall.

Once out of earshot, Roxas sighed. "Damn. We're already late for lunch."

"They'll wait for us."

"Hayner'll be mad."

"Well, hurry up then," Sora said. "Can't keep your best friend waiting."

"Too late for that," a low voice called. Roxas and Sora both ground to a halt, turning in the direction of the speaker. A tall boy with blond hair, surrounded by a group of others, stood there, hands resting on his waist. "Took you two long enough. We were getting bored."

"Sorry," Sora said, grinning. "Prof wanted sex advice."

"Turns out Demyx isn't quite satisfied-"

"And since the two of us are so invested in their happiness-"

"Don't do the freaky twin thing," Hayner said. "No one in real life does the freaky twin thing."

"Point is," Roxas said, "we have a valid reason for being late."

"I'm sure you do," Wakka interrupted. "But now that you're here, we can stop talking about the love lives of our professors and actually get something to eat, ya."

Which was a valid enough suggestion, so the group began to move. Sora hung back a little, watching them, for no other reason than the fact that his professor had recommended getting a tutor, and the mild anxiety that came with that made him, just for a minute, want to watch rather than be.

This was his life. He wouldn't have it any other way. He was surrounded by the best friends anyone could ever have. Wakka and Tidus and Selphie, whom he'd known since childhood. Hayner, Pence, and Olette, roommates and hall mates, and the nicest people he'd ever met. Roxas. Kairi. Everything was exactly as it should have been. He didn't really know why something like needing help in a class-something that had been true occasionally for most of his life, and that had never done more than make him feel slightly guilty and abashed-made him feel as if suddenly things had gone a bit wrong.

A hand closed around his wrist. His best friend looked up at him, smiling wide. "It's not gonna last forever."

Sora laughed, bumping Kairi's shoulder with his own. "Zero idea what you're talking about."

"Whatever's worrying you," Kairi said. "You're super stressed. I can see it on your face."

Sora's smile faltered a moment, which was about a moment longer than it should have. "There's nothing wrong," he said, trying to figure out even as he was speaking whether he was being honest or not. "Nothing huge, anyway."

"Doesn't really take something huge," Kairi said. "It can just be an accumulation of small things. I know you've had a lot to worry about lately."

"Not too much," Sora said. "But more than usual, which I guess can get to me like it gets to everyone else."

Kairi smiled at him, lacing their fingers together and squeezing them tight enough to hurt. "I know," she said. "But you're Sora. You're gonna make it through."

Which was the truth. Kairi had said it; Sora had always believed it; they could make it the truth.

He grinned, yanking her by the hand forward to catch up with the others. She did him one better and took off at a run. "Come on, you lazy bums!" she said, pulling him past the rest. "Standing around won't fill up my stomach any quicker."

Hayner shouted something rude after them. Sora laughed, and ran faster. This was probably why the two of them saw Riku before any of the others did.

He was sitting at the table Sora's group normally claimed as theirs, face buried in a textbook the size of a car and eating something that looked upsettingly expensive. There were tables open around him, some of them close enough that they'd be able to drag two or three of them together to seat them all. Really, it wasn't a big deal.

"Campus has twenty different eateries," Tidus said, coming up behind him. "Why is he always at ours?"

"Sorry," Sora said. "If I hadn't taken so long-"

"Not your fault. He's shown up often enough when all of us were here to know that table's ours."

"It's not like we've got a monopoly on the place," Selphie sighed. "He's got as much of a right to come here as we do."

"Don't have to like it," Hayner said. "Come on."

They started to. But before Sora could fully turn, Kairi's hand had slipped out of his own, and she'd made her way toward Riku.

It took a few seconds to realize what she was doing; a few more to believe it. They didn't talk to Riku. Most of them didn't care about him one way or the other, most of them hadn't said more than a few words to him in their lives, but Roxas hated him, and Hayner hated him, and Sora-who-hated-nobody hated him, and out of respect for their feelings, by unspoken agreement and except when necessary, most of the group kept away.

Kairi came to a stop before him. Something in Sora's stomach went uncomfortably tight.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Do you have a minute?"

Riku didn't look up immediately. From this angle, actually, it was hard to tell whether he looked up at all. But his hand came to rest on his book to keep it open, and he set down his fork. "If there's something you need."

"I do," she said. "Marlene? Third floor of Corel, I think she said she was in your econ class?" When Riku nodded slowly, she continued. "She asked me to tell you she wanted to meet you about the project over dinner. Like a study date. And I know her well enough to know when she's serious, so-"

"No."

Kairi squinted at him. "I'm not asking you to sweep you off her feet. It's only that-"

"Whatever it is doesn't matter," Riku said. He stood, dumping his textbooks in his backpack and slinging it on. "I don't really like indulging people. We'll meet at the library, like we'd agreed."

He walked away. Before he managed to leave, though, Kairi said something. Sora was farther away than Riku was, and he couldn't exactly hear. But he caught his own name. He saw the way Riku paused before he continued on and disappeared.

Kairi walked back to them, grinning slightly, the expression almost more irritated than it was abashed. "Sorry," she said. "I don't know what I was expecting."

"That's what I'd like to ask," Roxas said. "What did you think would happen?"

"I don't know?" she said. "I didn't think he'd jump to conclusions."

"So she doesn't like him?"

"She does. But she's shy, and I didn't want him to let her pine when instead he could let her down gently instead."

"Don't see why she would. Guy's an ass."

"Marlene's a transfer. She doesn't know how he is. All she probably sees is a pretty face."

"Isn't she the one Denzel's been waxing lyrical about?"

"The geophysics guy? I thought he was with Scarlet."

"No, that was last semester. Last I heard, Scarlet was a few weeks away from wrapping Veld around her finger, and Denzel-"

"I hate him."

All heads swiveled towards Sora.

"None of us like him much either," Tidus said slowly. "We know."

"No," Sora said, staring at the place Riku had been sitting only five minutes ago, at the chair Sora always used. "That's not what I..." His stomach had started spasming. His skin felt uncomfortable, as if it had gone too tight and his insides were going to burst the seams of himself. That couldn't happen. He'd always tried to keep the worst parts of himself hidden. He hated it that Riku drew them out where everyone else could see. "I hate him. I hate how he doesn't care about anyone, I hate how he can't be kind toward anyone, I hate how he never stops to think about how anyone else feels-"

"Sora," Roxas said.

"I hate that his first thought was that she liked him," Sora said. "I hate that the first thing he did was shut you down."

"_Sora._"

"I hate that he won't do a person the courtesy of explaining to them the way he feels," Sora said, louder now, "because apparently ignoring a situation is better than trying to deal with it. It doesn't make sense. I hate him. I hate him so-"

"Sora," Roxas said, and his voice was quiet and he sounded the way people sounded when they'd been trying very hard and had still lost. "Don't."

Sora said nothing for a moment. Around him, his friends were staring at him. He didn't know how to explain himself. He wished more than anything Riku hadn't come here.

"Pence?" he said. "Do you have your camera?"

Pence snorted and took it out of his bag.

"Take a picture," Sora said. "That's all I want. Just take a picture, all right?"

Roxas probably would have protested if Sora hd given him a chance. But Sora was already moving, threading his way through the throng of students walking to their dorms and classes, and his group of friends had to push in order to keep up with him. He ignored the way his stomach felt as if it would revolt, the way his brain was screaming nonsense words at him, whispering things that were a lot less like nonsense and more like rational arguments about why this wasn't a good idea, why it would be cruel. But his heart was pounding, and his chest hurt, and in his head he thought of studying and in his heart he thought of Marlene, and all his internal protests went quite dim.

A head of white hair came into view before him. Sora started running.

"Riku," he said.

Riku came to a halt.

Sora caught up with him easily, the pounding in his ribcage so fierce now that he thought he'd probably pass out. Riku was waiting for him, adjusting his book bag's strap over his shoulder, watching him the same way he always did, as if he were looking through him, or as if he were waiting for something that wouldn't come. He made Sora furious. He made Sora sad. He made Sora feel as if horrible things were rising up inside of himself, and everything he'd ever done was terribly wrong.

"I wanted to tell you something," he said. "I wanted-"

Riku stood there, and waited for him, and looked at him, and Sora had no idea why the world felt so wrong.

"I like you," he said, and hated himself. "I really do."

Riku's face went slack.

* * *

Pence dropped the camera.

"Did he just say what I think he said?" Selphie whispered, her eyes unnaturally wide. "He didn't just-"

"No," Tidus whispered. "He couldn't have."

"Take the picture," Hayner managed to say through the mouthful of air he was swallowing. "Pence! Look at his face! Take the picture!"

Sora," Kairi whispered. "What are you doing?"

A resounding _crack_ filled the air, and all heads turned towards Roxas. The blond was standing there, the pencil he was holding dropping to the floor in two large, broken pieces.

"Oh," Roxas said, eyes so wide it probably hurt. "No._"_

* * *

He hadn't done it for the vindictive pleasure of it.

That was the truth. Sora wasn't receiving any pleasure from it. Maybe he'd thought he would have; more than likely he hadn't been thinking much at all. There was no happiness he gained from watching Riku's pupils contract, or the way his lips went white, or the way he suddenly looked lost, and alone, nothing like he'd looked five minutes ago, when Kairi had told him about Marlene. If anything, Sora felt worse. But Riku was surprised, and Riku was shocked, and if Pence took a picture then Sora would be able to look at it in the future, and hold it close, and remind himself that if even people as larger-than-life as Riku could be knocked off-kilter, Sora would be able to make it through life, too. That this terrible person knew how it felt to be hurt or embarrassed, too. And then, when the guilt of proactively causing someone pain grew too much, he'd throw the photo away, but the knowledge would remain. Riku was human; it was okay for Sora to sometimes feel too-human, too.

Riku stood still.

And then, quite suddenly, he moved.

His hands were around the back of Sora's neck before Sora quite realized it, large and cold. Sora reared back, hands coming up to knock them away, but they squeezed, tightened, pulled him forward. Sora thought about apologizing; thought about how he should have planned this out better, or more quickly admitted that it was a lie. But before he could strike out, or say anything, Riku used his grip to pull him forward, and then there was a nose against his neck, and hands were trembling at his sides.

"Riku," Sora said, voice shaking. "What are you doing?"

Riku made a noise Sora would never be able to forget, and said, "Sorry. Sorry. Me, too."

* * *

"_Oh no,**"**_ Roxas said again, stumbling over himself. He grabbed his books and headed towards the pair, but Kairi's hand snaked out to grip his arm.

"Stop," she said. "Wait. We don't know what's happening, we have to wait."

"Pence!" Hayner hissed. _"Snap the fucking picture!"_

Pence snapped the picture.

* * *

Sora went limp.

"What," he said.

Riku didn't answer. His hands were still caught around Sora's body, his chest was still pressed against Sora's own, his heart was beating, loud and hard and so fast Sora thought he was imagining it, or mistaking it for his own. "What," he said again. "What do you mean? What are you-"

But Riku drew back, then, and his turquoise eyes were fever-bright in his flushed face, and the words caught in Sora's mouth like something corporeal.

"Come on," Riku said, and grabbed Sora's wrist. "Let's go."

Riku had pulled him to the sidewalk before Sora was able to again find his voice. "W-wait," he said, so much shakier than he'd meant, but he had no idea what was going on and didn't know how to make it stop. "What are you doing? Where are we going?"

Riku laughed, the sound like a strangled bark. "Home," he answered. "We're going home."

The answer basically wiped everything from Sora's head. He went along numbly as Riku led him, pulling him down the walkway, around students, up stairs and past lawns could dimly hear Roxas yelling somewhere, but the noise wouldn't register.

It wasn't a joke, Sora realized. Riku hadn't been lying. This wasn't a joke.

The last two minutes were blurring in his head, hazy enough that he was having trouble remembering which conversations are real and which only existed in the tumultuous confines of his head. He knew he'd spoken to Kairi, to Roxas and Hayner and Tidus and the rest. He knew he'd seen Riku. And then he'd gotten upset. He wasn't even sure why, except that Riku always made him upset. It was only that he'd thought of that girl, thought of Kairi wanting to ask him to let her down gently, thought of how Riku wouldn't even do that, and he'd felt so angry, so full of pain.

"_I like you, too."_

It wasn't a joke.

Sora didn't understand how it couldn't be a joke.

"_I like you, too."_

_Too._

He stumbled, tripped over his feet, and Riku's hand tightened on his arm, pulling him safe and upright. Sora closed his eyes and let himself be led, mind a heaving kaleidoscope, stomach churning painfully.

'_It was a joke,'_ he would say. _'I'm sorry, it was just a joke. I didn't mean to...I wouldn't have if I-I'm sorry. I didn't know...'_

And then those green eyes would stare at him, wide and unblinking, and they would cloud over, and he couldn't, he couldn't.

Riku finally came to a halt, pulling Sora up a set of steps. "This is it," he said, voice shaking. "My dorm, I mean."

Sora nodded, still dazed. Real, he thought. It wasn't a dream, it wasn't a nightmare. Any minute now Roxas would not be shaking him awake, and Zexion would not be standing over him, frowning in irritation and telling him never to fall asleep in class again. This was real. He wasn't sure what Riku wanted. He had no idea what to do.

Riku drew a wallet shakily out of his pocket and pulled out a keycard, inserting it into the slot along the side of the wall. Sora dimly noticed that it took him a few tries; Riku's hands were trembling worse than his voice was. "Come in," Riku said, but it was less a statement and more of a request. Sora didn't say anything. Riku pulled tentatively at Sora's wrist again, and waited until Sora followed to draw him inside, past the kitchens, down a hallway, climbing a set of stairs.

_What do I do. How do I apologize. Someone please be here to tell me what to do._

Riku's grip on Sora's wrist tightened, and he fumbled a door open. "This is my room," he said.

_What,_ Sora thought, _do I do._

And then Riku's grip shifted downward, and he twined his fingers through Sora's, and pressed him against the door, and kissed him.

Sora's stomach was rolling, and he was still stuck in the mess of his brain, so it took him a few moments longer to push Riku away than it might otherwise have. He did, gasping for breath, hands clasped around Riku's shoulders. "What are you doing," he said, even though he knew very well. "You shouldn't-I don't-"

"I won't," Riku said. "If you don't want me to. I can wait. We can do what we're supposed to do."

Sora shook his head blankly, trying to stop the pounding of his heart. "I don't," he said. "I don't know what you mean."

Riku shrugged nonchalantly, but the movement was belied by the way his entire body was stretched taut. "Dinner," he said. "Parks, movies, talking on the phone. Dating. I won't rush you. I won't do anything until it's something you want."

"That's not," Sora began, but his head was still twisting and he couldn't fight past the confusion and the twisting of his chest to say what he needed to say. He was supposed to be brave. All his life, he'd been so sure that if he ever had to be, he could be brave. "I don't need that," he said, trying to force the words from his throat. "I don't need you to take me anywhere. That's not what I want."

But when he tried to continue he couldn't, because Riku was staring at him as if Sora was new, and he had no idea why he'd thought this would be a good idea at all.

"Can I kiss you?" Riku asked.

He had so little idea what to do.

"Okay," he said.

Riku eyes looked as if they'd spent the last minute staring at the sun.

And then his lips descended onto Sora's, and every thought disappeared.

The lips above his were warm, insistent, pressing down on his own, massaging and caressing and turning the pit of Sora's stomach somehow both molten and cold. His tongue traced along the part of Sora's lips, slipped inside when Sora opened them automatically, slid against Sora's own with an intensity that made Sora's hands, still held like claws against Riku's shoulders, clench. If Sora moaned he'd never be able to remember it later. What he _would _remember was his head feeling as if it would turn in on itself, and guilt.

Riku loved him. Why couldn't it have all been a joke.

Riku pulled back, nudging their foreheads together, eyes closed. His lips were red and wet. His face looked stricken. "I want to go out with you," he said. "Not now. But later. Let me do things with you. Parks, movies, talking on the phone. Please let me later."

He needed to stop this. He needed to end it now.

"Later," he said. It might have been a request for clarification. Sora didn't know. All he knew was that Riku's face had opened, and that the curve of his mouth looked very wide.

"All right," Riku said. He kissed him again. Sora's eyes didn't close. "All right."

Everything went a little fuzzy after that.

Riku took the flesh of Sora's neck between his lips, sucking hard, hands wandering down to slip under Sora's shirt, running over the soft flesh, tugging the cloth up and around Sora's underarms. The other began working on jean buttons. Sora made a noise deep in his throat, but he wasn't pulling away, he was pushing forward, and he didn't know why and didn't know how, and his head hurt and his stomach hurt and all he wanted to do was make that stop.

"Tell me the moment you want me to stop," Riku whispered shakily, his voice almost breaking. "If you don't want to…I'll let go, if you don't want…We can do anything. We'll do whatever you want. Just tell me if you ever want me to stop."

Sora said nothing. Later, when Riku's face buried itself between his legs and Sora's groans filled the air, he'd wonder why. When Riku stopped and slipped one, two, three fingers inside, he'd toss his head back and wonder why. And when Riku grabbed Sora's thighs and bent them, draping the limbs over his own shoulders and sliding slowly in, Sora would wonder why. He'd repeat the words inside his mind time and again, and scream internally at the voice gasping and crying out into the warm air.

His own voice, cracking and breaking as moan after moan was drawn from him.

He hadn't wanted to hurt Riku's feelings. He'd only been so angry. Why couldn't it have been a joke.

"I love you," Riku sobbed hoarsely, clutching Sora's head to his chest even as he continued moving inside him. "I love you so much."

Sora reached for him, less because he wanted his hands on Riku and more because the world was turning around him and if he didn't have something to claw into he thought he'd scream. Riku grabbed Sora's hands and held them tight, pushing slowly inside of him and never for an instant letting go.

"I love you. Sora. _Sora_. I love you."

Sora said nothing.


	2. A Dreamlike Merry Go Round

**Notes: **Still very much lacking in ownership; title is from the Dual: Parallel Trouble Adventure op.

**Warnings:** Somewhat **dubious consent**; more so in the **first** chapter than the others.

* * *

**Advanced Theory**

**Chapter Two: A Dreamlike Merry-Go-Round**

The room was bright.

The last hour had been one misunderstanding after another, but _this_ unnerved Sora the most. The sun had barely fallen past its apex, and its rays lit the room even as they made it uncomfortably warm. In all his life, Sora had never imagined it would be like this. He'd thought about it - he was a growing teenager, after all, and pure innocence will only last for so long - but he'd never _once_ imagined it would be like this.

Lying sprawled across the bed, warmth dripping down his abdomen and onto the comforter lying beneath him, his head pounding, his stomach heaving, Riku's body hovering above his own. His fingernails still embedded in Riku's back.

And the sun lighting the room. It was almost summer, it was an hour past midday, and the sun was lighting the room.

Sora let his head drop to the side, staring with wide eyes at the cream-colored wall. The air felt heavy. It seemed like the moisture in the atmosphere was pressing down on him, beading on his skin and rolling down, similar to the way their combined fluids were sliding down his stomach, legs.

_What,_ he thought, _did I just do?_

The nausea hit him then, sudden and violent, and Sora tried to sit up because he was sure that the contents of his stomach - _not that I had the chance to eat anything; I wonder what my friends are thinking now?_ - were about to force their way out of his body by way of mouth.

"Sora?" Riku began quietly. "You shouldn't get up. You might be a little sore."

For a single moment, the urge to vomit reached a crescendo.

And then - just as abruptly as it had begun - the nausea quieted, settling in the pit of his abdomen. Riku was still poised above him, holding his weight on arms and legs. Their faces were close enough that the white strands of Riku's hair swept across his mouth, nose. Sora twisted his head, trying to remove himself from the feel of that hair on his face. Riku laughed, tossing his hair over his shoulder.

"Are you all right?" he asked, lowering himself until his nose nudged Sora's throat. "Are you sore?"

Sora tried to take a deep breath, but the air stuck in his throat. He felt…different. Numb. Like something was bubbling below the surface, just waiting to erupt, but the feeling was elusive and he couldn't keep a proper hold on it. "I…" he began, wincing when his vocal chords tightened and protested their use. "I don't know."

Riku leaned back and smiled, the expression inexplicably softening the sharp planes of his face. He dropped a single kiss to Sora's lips, too quick to really feel, and rolled off the bed. "Just wait here," he murmured, brushing Sora's damp bangs out of his eyes. "I'll be right back."

Sora didn't turn to stare after him. He didn't much feel like moving at all - the air was too heavy, too hot and humid and the scent of it made his stomach curl uncomfortably. He took a deep, shuddering breath and blinked up at the ceiling.

He'd always thought he could be brave.

Already his thoughts were congealing, filling up the mire of his head with barbs, names. _Cruel, coward, you couldn't control your own desire for petty revenge long enough to stop from hurting someone who'd never done anything to you except show you that you were capable of irrational hate._

"I didn't mean to," Sora whispered. "I didn't know it would turn out so wrong."

'_Don't pretend it would have mattered to you if you had. You wanted to hurt him. You would have done anything to see him flinch. If you'd known he was in love with you, you wouldn't have settled for confessing in the middle of a mostly empty cafe. You would have probably done it in front of an entire hall._

Sora lifted his hands to cover his eyes, listening to the blood rushing in his ears, trying desperately to drown out the malicious voice reverberating inside his head.

_Admit it. You've never been kind. Being nice to people you like doesn't make you kind. _

"It does," he said. "I didn't know what was happening. It was too fast. I don't…I'm not…"

_Cruel. You slept with someone who loves you because you were too scared of him finding out how horrible you are to keep from hurting him even more._

"I didn't want to hurt him."

_You are so, so cruel._

"I didn't mean to do something wrong," Sora whispered.

"Sora?"

Sora's head snapped to the side. Riku was standing there, a towel wrapped around his waist and another clutched in his hand. His eyes were wide, and dark, and confused. He took a step forward and sat down on the bed, outstretching his hand to smooth Sora's hair back. Sora flinched before he could stop himself. Riku's hand froze.

"Sora," he said. "What did you just say?"

It would be super if Sora knew how the hell to answer that question.

"Sora," Riku said. "Are you talking about what we just did."

Given that Sora had just given up his virginity to someone for the sake of not having to see his face when he realized this had been meant as a joke, it would probably be best if he denied that. His mouth wouldn't work, though.

Riku stared at him. He lifted a hand. Sora watched it. He didn't move.

And then arms were around Sora's shoulders, and Riku was pulling him closer, pressing his face against Sora's neck. Sora made a sound deep in his throat, fingers coming up to dig instinctively into Riku's hips. Riku shuddered against him. Sora could feel trembles shooting up and down his spine.

"If you mean that you don't think you should have," Riku said, "or because you wanted to wait, then-then I'm sorry. I'll apologize forever. I'll make sure I never try to push you again. But don't tell me that you think it's wrong just because it was sex. It wasn't. It's not. I love you. You didn't do anything wrong."

Sora's fingernails were about a few fractions of pressure from embedding themselves in Riku's skin, he realized. He pulled them free. God. Every part of his body hurt, and the bed was a mess, and…he didn't know. He just wanted to leave, to get up and leave and never come back.

"Can you let go?" he said, inexplicably proud of himself when his voice didn't quaver. "I want to sit up."

Riku automatically rolled away, and Sora clenched his fists, thrusting his hands back to lever himself off the bed. He took a deep breath and clenched his abdomen, placing weight on his arms and -

He bit down on the cry that tried to rip its way through his abused throat but couldn't help the gasp that escaped. All right, that had been unpleasant. And somewhat surprising, given how slow Riku had gone earlier. He flopped back down, staring back up again at the ceiling. Beside him, Riku leaned down.

"Sora?" he asked. "Are you okay? Does it hurt that much? I tried to be careful. I promise I did."

"I'm fine," Sora said. He grit his teeth and rolled over, forcing himself up onto hands and knees. "It's supposed to hurt a little after the first time, right?"

Silence.

Sora opened his eyes. Riku was staring at him, his eyes impossibly wide in his face and his mouth gaping open. Sora frowned, the feeling of surrealism increasing.

"What?" he said. "Don't stare like that."

"Your first time," Riku said.

Strange, the way he thought he could finally muffle sudden and consuming nausea, only to have it return a minute later even worse.

"Yes," he said, and his voice sounded cheery to his ears which was mildly disconcerting given the fact that he hated himself very badly and the only thing he really wanted to do right now was throw up, and then scream. "I'd never done this before. I was a complete virgin. Sorry about the-"

Riku threw his arms around Sora's shoulders and squeezed.

"You gave me your first time," he said.

Sora laughed, and thought he'd probably cry. "Yeah," he said. "I didn't know what else to do."

It took a long time before Riku spoke. His grip on Sora wasn't confining; Sora felt very sure that he would be able to pull away the moment he made a move. He wondered if the reason he wasn't doing so was shock; decided that it was probably only because he was a coward and had suddenly been unable to stand the thought of confrontation that would invariably end with someone, even Riku, hating him because he was cruel.

He felt disassociated. He felt numb.

"I love you," Riku said. "With all my heart."

Sora truly wished that Riku hadn't.

"Come on," Riku said at last. He drew the lobe of Sora's ear between his teeth. "I drew a bath. Let's get you cleaned up."

"I'm not," Sora said. "I can't bathe with you."

"You don't have to," Riku said. "Not unless you want to. You can have it first. But I should-I wanted to take care of you. It was your first time. I don't want you to be hurt."

Sora closed his eyes, and told himself he would not, in front of Riku, cry. "I'm not," he said again.

Sooner or later Riku would tire of him. That was a fact. Riku didn't know him. Riku saw what everyone saw-what Sora had thought, until today, had been the truth: that Sora was happy, that Sora was bright, that Sora could deal with anything, good or bad, with determination and honor and strength. But Sora had been slipping for a while now, hadn't he. Riku would see that soon enough.

In the end, all he could do to prevent more pain was to go along with this charade. Maybe that would make him brave.

Riku was watching him. Sora had never hated him more than he now hated himself.

"Okay," he said. "Please help."

Riku's face broke into a smile that almost hurt Sora to see. "Come on," he said quietly, and stood. "Lean on me."

Sora closed his eyes, wrapped himself up in a bed sheet, eased himself off the bed, and did.

The first touch of feet on floor almost undid him - sharp pain shot up the length of his back and he cried out, wobbling and tipping to one side. Riku grabbed onto his waist and slipped an arm around Sora's waist, hoisting him up onto his tiptoes so that almost no weight was placed on Sora's feet. "It's all right," Riku said. "I have you."

"Yes," Sora said. "I know."

Riku led him to the bathroom, situated in the rear of the single. Sora thought about asking why Riku had his own shower, when as far as he knew all the other dorms had to share. He thought about asking why Riku wasn't rooming with anyone else. Mostly he thought about asking Riku if he could please let go.

He let Riku pull him to the bathtub, already steaming and full. Sora let the blanket fall. He ignored the way Riku went still beside him, the way he could suddenly feel eyes on his neck. He grabbed one of Riku's hands, squeezing it for leverage as he climbed, slow and stiff, over the edge. The water was hot. He hoped, very distantly, that it would burn.

"Can I come in please," Riku whispered.

Sora stared at him. Guilt demons danced wild and horrible in his head.

"Yeah," Sora said. "Whatever you want."

Riku owned him.

Sora had Riku's heart in his hands. Given the way Riku was currently looking at him-as if Sora was everything he had ever wanted, as if the skies had come alive-Sora could probably demand that Riku get out and leave him alone, and Riku would nod and go. That didn't matter. Sora had dangled in front of him the thing Riku had wanted most out of nothing but pettiness and anger. What right did Sora have to deny him anything? Sora had been cruel.

Riku stepped out of the towel wrapped around his waist. He watched Sora as if he was trying to puzzle through every infinitesimal twitch of his face. Sora kept his eyes locked on Riku's. He didn't let himself move away.

The tub was too small to fit both, and their legs tangled uncomfortably. Sora pulled his away; the move sent sharp shocks of pain up his spine, a small, muffled _tsk_ through his teeth. Riku leaned forward immediately, wrapping a hand in Sora's hair.

"You can lean back against me," he said quietly. "It would give you more space. It would be easier to help you clean off."

Sora closed his eyes.

"Let me try it like this first," he said. "I don't want to feel like a child."

"You're not a child," Riku agreed, but said nothing else.

The silence that followed was too empty to be awkward. Sora closed his eyes against it, scrubbing at his skin until it glowed pink. His stomach felt as if it was trying to eat itself, though the pain was duller than he'd have otherwise thought. It felt a little like the way he'd felt that morning, with Zexion's words hanging over his head. Like the vague suspicion that his life had tumbled away from him, and that there was nothing he could do to get it back. He told himself that he was wrong, but his words didn't sound insistent enough, and he couldn't hold onto the belief.

"Sora," Riku said.

Sora opened his eyes.

Riku's lips descended on his own.

The worst part of it, Sora would think later, was that he let him. The only time in the last hour he hadn't felt entirely like he was going to vomit was when Riku had been inside of him. If Riku kissed him enough, Sora could forget the way he felt.

He let Riku kiss him, for long enough that the guilt and pain started to drift away. And then Riku slid his tongue inside, and Sora's brain stuttered.

"Stop," he said.

Riku pulled back. "I won't push you," he said. "I know you're still hurt. I wouldn't ask you for anything until you're completely healed. You're still healing. I could just…"

"I know," Sora said. "But I need you to stop." His heart was pounding. He wanted to run. "From now on. The first time I tell you to. I need you to immediately stop."

Riku stared at him. Sora could see him working through what had happened an hour ago. Sora could see the panic that came with not being able to remember if Sora had, even just in a whisper, told him to stop.

"I didn't," Sora said, voice so much more quiet than he wanted it to be. "Don't worry. You didn't do anything wrong."

Riku watched him. He didn't say anything.

Sora turned away, and curled his hands around the ledge. "Help me up," he said quietly. "I think we're clean."

Riku stood immediately, more indifferent to his nakedness than Sora thought he could ever be. He outstretched a hand, hauling Sora to his feet. He was already toweling him dry when he spoke.

"I will," he said in a whisper. "You don't ever have to doubt that. I'll always stop."

Sora's throat went very tight.

Riku dried him more carefully than Sora would have ever expected from him, wiping the cloth over his elbows, the crook of his knees. "I'll lend you some of my clothes," Riku said. "It'll be a bit big on you, but it'll do until we find something that fits better."

"I can wear what I was wearing before," Sora said.

"If you want," Riku said. "But it would be clean."

His eyes were scared, and warm, and very bright.

"All right," Sora said.

Riku smiled. He was beautiful. Sora thought maybe that made everything worse.

He helped Sora out of the bathroom and deposited him on the bed, grabbing a t-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms from the dresser. "I didn't think you'd want my boxers," he said, by way of explanation. "I'll step outside if it makes you more comfortable, okay?"

Sora nodded slowly, because he didn't know if he'd be able to speak past the lump in his throat. Riku stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. And Sora was alone.

The clothes were big, and much too large to fit him. They smelled like laundry detergent. Sora thought he'd seen Riku wearing the shirt before. It looked familiar. It looked like something Riku would wear. Sora hoped Riku wouldn't put it on again. Even after this was over, he didn't think he'd be able to handle seeing it again.

He'd think about that at home.

"I'm dressed," he said. "You can come in now."

The door clicked open a few seconds later. Riku looked him over. He wasn't smiling exactly; before today, Sora could only remember seeing Riku smile perhaps once. But his eyes were warm, and he looked at Sora as if there were a hundred things he wanted to say, and no way to formulate the words. "It looks good," he said. "Lay down. If you want to heal quickly, you should go to sleep."

For an instant, Sora thought of arguing. The thought disappeared almost as soon as it had surfaced. Sleep would be good. He wouldn't have to think if he was asleep_._ He nodded quietly and kicked the soiled comforter to the floor, curling up under the remaining bed sheet. Maybe he'd be braver when he woke up. He would sleep.

And then the pounding started.

Riku and Sora both jerked their heads to the door. Someone was all but attacking the entrance, swearing and cursing at the top of their lungs. Sora didn't even need to listen to the voice to know who it was.

"Riku! Open the door!"

"It's Roxas," Sora whispered against the pillow. Riku reached out an absent hand to ruffle Sora's messy head of hair. His eyes were distant, though, and turned towards the door.

"Stay in bed," he said, twirling a spike of hair between two fingers. "I'll talk to him. Don't worry."

"Riku, you piece of shit! Open the fucking door!"

The pounding was rougher now. It wasn't until Riku stood that Sora finally realized what this meant.

Roxas was here. Roxas could help.

Sora made mistakes sometimes. They all made mistakes sometimes. But Roxas was always there to help him work through them. Roxas could tell him what to do. Roxas could whisk him away. Roxas could rebuild the parts of Sora that had cracked when he'd realized that there was malice inside of him, and that he'd been more than willing to unleash that malice on someone who'd never done anything but be someone Sora could not face.

Coward, he thought. How did you ever think you were brave.

He could hear the door swinging on its hinges and Riku exiting, closing the door behind him. If he listened closely, he could faintly make out a few different set of voices, but they were masked by his brother's curses.

"Where is he."

Roxas hadn't been the one to say that, though. That was Kairi.

"He's here," Riku said. "Where else would I have taken him?"

"Anywhere," Kairi said. "But you made it a bit difficult to follow you, given that our keycards don't work on dorms other than our own."

"Half an hour," Roxas said. He wasn't shouting now. Sora had to strain to hear. "You took him. We didn't know what was going on. And we were outside waiting for someone to let us in for half an hour."

"I'm sorry."

Silence. Sora sat up, and thought of apologies, and rolled out of bed.

"It wasn't my intention to make you worry," Riku said. "I wasn't thinking properly."

"I don't care if you weren't thinking at all," Roxas said, and his voice was very quiet now. "You took him. What on earth do you think I'm going to do."

Riku might have answered. But that was when Sora opened the door.

Everyone was out there, crowded into the narrow hallway. No one had their hands on anyone else, no one looked as if they would let a punch fly. But in the instant before both Roxas and Riku registered him, Sora had seen something very cold in their eyes. He didn't want to think about what either of them would do.

"Don't do that here," Sora said quietly. "If you want to talk, you should come in."

They all stared at him. Sora wished that they would not.

"You shouldn't be up," Riku said. "You'll hurt yourself. You'll need to-"

"Sora," Roxas said.

Sora's hands slid unconsciously to the pit of his stomach and began to rub. "Please," he said. "I'd rather do this inside."

Riku looked at him. For a very long moment, he did not so much as blink.

"The two of them," Riku said at last, pointing at Roxas and Kairi. His eyes never left Sora's. "Just them."

Tidus and Hayner both growled and opened their mouths to protest, but glares in triplicate from Roxas, Riku, and Kairi forestalled any dissent. The four of them stepped inside the dorm room. The door closed behind.

Almost immediately both Kairi and Roxas turned to Sora, grabbing him by the arms.

"What happened?" Roxas said, voice low. "What did he do?"

"Are you hurt?" Kairi asked.

"I'm not," Sora said, because her question was easier to answer than Roxas's. "I'm fine."

Kairi bit her lip and glanced at Roxas and Riku both. "Sora," she said quietly. "What exactly happened when you left us?"

Half an hour ago, Sora probably would have flinched. But he felt a little too thoroughly hollowed now. "I told him," he said. "Riku accepted. It's as simple as that."

Sora was looking at Kairi when he answered. But he could see the full-body jerk that swept through Roxas. He could see the instinctive chin lift that meant that Roxas had probably also just gone white.

"I want to go out with him."

Roxas and Kairi turned towards Riku. Sora lowered his gaze firmly toward the ground.

"I don't want something casual," Riku said, with the same voice he used during class, the one that sounded as if his head was somewhere else. "I don't want a one night stand. I want an actual relationship, and if I have to ask Sora's friends for permission in order to keep everyone happy, I'll do it."

The last sentence never reached any of his companions.

"No," Kairi breathed, a hand raising to rest on her mouth. "Oh, Sora, no."

"Kairi," Sora said, but couldn't really say any more.

"You did, didn't you?" Roxas whispered to Riku. "You fucked him."

"I had sex with him," Riku said. "If that's what you mean."

Roxas stared at him. And then he launched himself across the room.

Kairi caught him around the shoulders before Roxas could reach him, and Sora was there an instant later, hands clawing at Roxas's arms to keep him back, but Roxas fought them, doing his level best to get at Riku. "Piece of shit," he shouted. "He doesn't want you, he doesn't like you, what did you fucking-"

"Roxas," Sora said. "_Stop_."

"I wont," Roxas said. "Let me go, I'll kill him, I won't let him do that to-"

"He didn't do anything I didn't tell him he could do."

Roxas froze.

"What," he breathed, "do you mean?"

Kairi was looking at him with an expression he couldn't read. It was nothing compared to Roxas's.

"I mean that I let him," Sora said. "Don't be mad at him for that."

Sora told himself that he'd forget the way Roxas looked at him then. But he had the faintest suspicion that was a lie.

Roxas stared at him, pupils very small in his eyes. He said nothing for an endless moment. And then he turned to Riku, his entire body shaking like a leaf. "What…what do you want?" he asked quietly.

Riku had been expressionless from the moment Kairi and Roxas had walked in. His face didn't change now. "Exactly what I said."

Roxas's eyes had been ice for a long while now. Now they looked very remote.

"No."

"Roxas," Sora said.

"No," Roxas said. "My brother confessed half an hour ago. It's hard, believing you care about him, when the first thing you did was take him to bed."

Riku watched him. Then he said, "Do you want me on my knees?"

Kairi's hand had slipped inside Sora's. He could feel it, therefore, when it went perfectly still.

"I could do it," Riku said, voice idle. "I love him. I could get on my knees and beg."

Roxas went a little white.

"You what?" he said.

"I love him," Riku repeated. "And I don't have to explain that, and I don't have to justify that, and I don't need to do anything except treat him as best I can until he decides he's had enough. But you're Sora's brother. It would upset him to be with me without your blessing. Is that clear enough."

Roxas had always been the more logical of them. Roxas had always known how to take the pieces and assemble them into a solution that made sense.

Roxas looked at Sora, face blank, eyes like pieces of flint, and Sora realized that Roxas had assimilated the information given to him-Riku's confession, Sora's avoidance, the guilt in Sora's eyes-and come to the correct conclusion. That would make things easier in the long run. Sora couldn't quite figure out if he should be grateful for that.

"You love him," Roxas said.

"Of course," Riku said. "I do."

Kairi's hand was warm in his. He squeezed it. She squeezed back so tightly it hurt.

"Sora," Roxas said at last, his quiet voice betraying no emotions. "Let's go home."

"He shouldn't," Riku said. "He's sore. He shouldn't have to move."

"That wasn't a request," Roxas said.

It was. Roxas would never take any choice out of Sora's hands. But Riku didn't know that.

Roxas had always been smart. He'd always been the smartest one of them all.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Sora said. "I will. But Roxas's right. Right now, I need to be home."

Riku's face gave away nothing. It said something about how finely attuned Sora now was to him that he could see, sweeping across the line of his brow, something a bit like hurt.

_You're giving him this much,_ he told himself. _You'll be no use to anyone if you break.__  
_

_I'll be so much stronger tomorrow. But today, please let me go home._

"Of course," Riku said. "Whatever you want."

Sora nodded and turned around slowly. Roxas outstretched a hand towards him. Sora reached for it with the hand that wasn't already wrapped around Kairi's. His younger brother stared at him quietly before spinning on his heel, opening the door and leading Sora and Kairi out.

Immediately, the rest of their group beset them, demanding answers, all of them talking at once. Sora grit his teeth against the sudden pounding in his head that arose with the noise. Kairi's hand convulsed in his. He squeezed it as if it was all that would keep him on earth.

"Not today," Roxas said. The group instantly quieted, turning to look at him. "We're not coming tonight. I'll explain everything later. I will. Just…just keep quiet for a little while. I won't do it now."

It was only after a few minutes had passed - and only once Roxas and Sora had escaped the indignant cries and demands of their friends, all of them except Kairi, who stood in the crowd of them, silent as she watched them leave - that Roxas spoke.

"You have a lot to explain, Sora," he said. His voice was trembling, but the hand clutching Sora's own was steady and warm. "Talk."

Sora did.


	3. A Wish Carried On The Wind

**Disclaimer: **kh is still not mine.  
**Author's Notes: **chapter title from asterisk (orange range, bleach op 1); the final line of riku's speech has its origin, with heavy edits, in twig's _a long, hard road_.**  
****Dedication:** For **The Writer You Fools**.**  
**

* * *

**Advanced Theory  
****Chapter Three: A Wish Carried On The Wind**

The air had cooled considerably in the last hour. It swept through the trees in an easy breeze, rustling and whistling through the leaves. Beneath the canopies, hundreds of students milled around, some clutching their sweaters around them, others shivering in the shorts that had been all-too appropriate a few hours earlier.

Two boys pushed their way past their schoolmates, the cooling temperature as far from their minds as their classes were.

"You don't owe him anything."

Sora's fingers jerked, but made no move to answer.

"You can apologize, if you want," Roxas said. "I know you like being kind to people. I know you get strange about that sort of thing. But I don't think I'm much inclined to let him fuck you when all he ever did to deserve it was be victim to an ill-thought out prank."

"You don't get a say," Sora said.

"You've spent the last month waking up gasping," Roxas said, "and every time I look at you in the split second before you notice you look like you're going to scream. You're currently the wrong side of self-loathing, and you've been bordering on the edge of that for weeks. If anyone gets a say, it's me."

"I'm not letting him love me because I've been feeling sick lately," Sora said. "Even if I were, you wouldn't have the right."

"Maybe not," Roxas said. "But ask me whether I give a shit about my right when my brother is letting someone he hates fuck him just because he never realized that he was human, and could therefore make mistakes, too."

"I don't hate him," Sora said.

"Yes," Roxas said. "You do."

Sora slid to a stop.

Roxas and Sora lived in a house a ten minute walk away from the university, in one of the small, narrow two-stories that professors mostly bought. It was close enough to the college that neither of them had needed a dorm room. They stayed on campus sometimes anyway; why wouldn't they, when all their friends were there. But their house was quiet, and removed. No one was around.

"Don't tell me I'm someone I'm not," Sora said quietly. "Don't tell me not to try to make restitution as best as I can, when all I've been feeling for the last month is sick."

"There's nothing wrong with you looking out primarily for you," Roxas said. "He's worthless. He's pointless. Sora, you don't owe him a thing."

"I tried to make him feel bad because I did," Sora said. "That's not who I am. That's not the person I want to be."

"Who you are matters less than whether you're happy," Roxas said.

"Sure," Sora said. "But I'm not."

Roxas didn't answer. But then, Roxas had always thought that Sora should love no one more than he loved himself.

He closed his eyes.

"I hurt him," Sora said, quiet. "I'm hurting him even now. I'll hurt him until the day he gets tired of me, because that's apparently who I am right now. But Riku's smart. He'll figure out that this is never going to work sooner or later. He'll get tired of me. He'll get out."

Roxas didn't answer. Sora wished he knew what that meant.

"Come on," he said. "I'm hungry. Let's just go home, please."

Roxas didn't answer.

They continued silently down the street, past buildings that grew progressively older and more wooded, until they reached the edge of the forest. A thin, white-washed house nestled against the trees. A car that didn't belong to either of them was parked in the driveway. Roxas unlocked the door and pushed it open.

"We're home," Roxas said.

There was a crash from the kitchen, before a messy blond head popped out. "Come in. Zexion's here."

"I can see his car," Roxas said quietly, but Demyx had already disappeared back in. Roxas took a step forward. Sora's hands came around his shoulders before he could make it more than a pace and spun him back around.

"Don't tell them," he said.

Roxas watched him with eyes Sora couldn't read. "Don't tell him that our brother is sleeping with someone he hates," he said, more of a statement than a request for clarification.

"Don't," Sora said. "You know what will happen. Let me handle this, please. I can take care of Riku. I won't let anything bad happen. Just stay quiet. Please."

Roxas stared at him, his mouth an inscrutable seam. He nodded then, just once, and turned back around, continuing towards the kitchen.

"Hey, Demyx," Sora greeted, smiling as brightly as he could. "What's up?"

Demyx grinned back, turning to wave a spatula over his shoulder from his place at the stove. "Not Zexion, that's for sure."

Sora and Roxas turned towards the other figure sitting at the kitchen table and snorted. Zexion was sprawled there, bruises and scrapes covering his face and a bandage wrapped amateurishly around his entire upper body.

"We broke the coffee table," Demyx said, almost as an afterthought. "Zexion took the brunt of the injury."

"It wasn't my fault," Zexion said. His voice was as steady as always. "It's only that your furniture doesn't much appreciate bouncing."

"And that's _more_ than enough information," Roxas said. "I prefer the days when the two of you refused to even hint about what went on behind closed doors."

"Long gone," Demyx said. "Sit down. It's time to eat."

Dinner was normal. It was always normal. Their family had spent the last eighteen years here, held together by warmth and light and love. It was the easiest thing in the world, to sit down to dinner with his brothers and friends and talk, about school, about life, about the way that Zexion and Demyx seemingly couldn't go a week without causing some sort of destruction to the property because neither of them understood the value of vanilla sex. Sora loved his life. He'd been happy for years.

He didn't like how long it had been since he'd last been able to feel at home here.

Before Sora and Roxas went upstairs, Zexion stopped him. "I set up a meeting with Axel," he said. "He said he wouldn't mind."

Sora gave him a smile that felt wooden on his mouth, and said, "yeah, thanks."

He took a shower shortly after. He'd been wanting one all day. He'd read enough books to know what that meant, but he didn't really want to think about it. When he got out, Roxas was already in bed. Sora changed in the darkness, climbing up to his bunk. He hoped that Roxas was already in sleep, but didn't think he was.

"Sora."

Sora turned on his side and buried his face in his pillow. "Yeah."

Roxas didn't respond immediately. When he did, his voice was smaller than it had been all day, and Sora didn't think that he wanted to see his face. "I don't know what to do."

"You don't have to do anything," Sora said.

"I knew he loved you," Roxas said quietly. "I knew he was looking at you from day one. I could have told you. I should have done something."

"You didn't know what I was going to do," Sora said. "I barely knew what I was going to do. There's no way you could have predicted it would turn out like that."

"I could have," Roxas said. "I know you."

"You didn't know I would be that cruel."

"I knew you were angry," Roxas said. "This is my fault. I don't know what to do."

Down the hall, the floorboards were creaking. Sora could hear low, soft voices behind the door, the walls, could imagine the way Demyx and Zexion looked as they walked into Demyx's room. Sora had never known what they saw in each other, save two people who loved themselves desperately, who'd taught each other how to love someone else, too. Sora didn't know anything about their life together outside of how much they enjoyed sex. It had been so long since Sora had remembered to pay attention to that sort of thing.

An afternoon ago, he'd seen Riku's face when Riku said he loved him. He'd seen the way Roxas looked when all he wanted to do was scream.

He slipped his hand over the edge of the bed. It took about a half second before Roxas grasped it, squeezing so tightly Sora thought his hand would break.

"You're allowed to be selfish," Roxas said. "I agree with Demyx on so little, but I've always agreed that the first person you should always take care of is you."

"I know," Sora whispered. "Roxas. Roxas. I do."

But Sora didn't, and the worst thing about it was that everyone knew.

* * *

The sun shone through the bright yellow curtains, filtering through the fabric and giving the room a soft, hazy glow. Sora rolled over, drifting for a minute in that lazy place where dreams and reality seemed the same. He opened his eyes.

His brother was gone, his bed made neatly and pillows fluffed. Roxas had an 8:30 class on Thursdays. By the time Sora woke, Roxas was normally already long gone. Normal, then.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and let his gaze fall on the desk sitting parallel to the bed. There was a folded note resting on it beside a pair of room keys. Sora reached out, missing the paper once before he grabbed it and brought it to his face. The writing was clearly Roxas's - neat and narrow and slanted.

_I didn't want to wake you, so I left a bit earlier than normal. Sleep in. I'll find that Axel guy later and tell him that you're taking the day off. The remote's on the counter, if you want to watch some TV. Please sleep in._

Sora had spent his first five minutes awake with no idea why his body felt heavier than it should have. Tired and sluggish as he was, he might have taken another five to remember what had happened yesterday if Roxas had not told him to sleep in.

It took him several minutes to force himself up, and several more to feel confident enough to walk when his back hurt and little licks of pain were flicking up his spine. He made his way to the drawers, rifling through them for clothes to squirm into, something that wouldn't be too difficult to put on when his muscles were screaming and he found himself suddenly disinclined to bend.

Demyx left for work early most mornings, and Zexion typically alternated between sleeping like the dead on Saturday and Sunday and getting three hours every other day of the week; the house was empty. That, more than anything, was the biggest reason to stay.

Sora grabbed his wallet and left.

The walk back took a little longer than it had yesterday, because he felt oddly more sore now that he'd had a full night's sleep. His dorm room was empty as well; Pence had classes all morning long, and none of their friends lived in the dorm. It was early enough that half of his hallmates were still in their rooms, asleep or getting dressed or playing music a little louder than the RA typically approved of, but the ones who lived closest had early schedules, and Sora couldn't hear more than faraway music drifting lightly through the closed door. His stomach growled. He ignored it.

He took his textbooks from the desk and tossed them onto the bed.

Sora had never been good at school. It wasn't that he didn't try hard, because he did; he studied sometimes until he felt as if he would crawl out of his skin, until his head was full of displaced facts and dates and he thought that if he had to remember another word he'd commit a crime. But his strengths lay in other things. Kairi talked to him about that sometimes; the world was made up of different people-it wasn't fair to ascribe intelligence only to those who were good at memorizing dates. He tried to believe her, mostly. It could be pretty hard.

He tried hard. He tried so hard.

He wiped at his face before he knew he was going to, ignoring the way his throat felt tight-sobbed before he could stop himself, too. He bit down hard on his palm; held it there, bit and bit, until he stopped shaking, and his breath stopped coming in great, heaving gasps.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't be this person. It couldn't be that there existed in something so dark he'd actually thought he would gain satisfaction from hurting another person. Of course that person had turned out to love him. Sora had tried to hurt someone purposefully; what punishment would be more appropriate than having to bear the burden of that person's love.

It would be fine. He needed to believe that. He could make it all okay again. Everything would be fine.

Someone knocked on the door.

Sora wiped at his eyes hurriedly, trying to rub the soreness from them. "Coming," he shouted, slipping off the bed so quickly he thought he felt something inside him twist. "Just a sec, I'll be right there."

He opened the door.

Riku was there.

He was standing slouched, hands in pockets, the way people did when they wanted to hide, or when they wanted eyes to be anywhere but on them. In the instant before Riku's eyes focused on him, they looked shadowed. Sora would never be able to describe the way they changed when they locked eyes; only that they did, and that Sora didn't know whether the sudden rise of guilt or shock hurt more.

Riku's lips were on his before he had time to speak, in a soft, chaste good morning kiss that kept his eyes open wide even as his body warred between the desires to go limp and stiff. His hands closed around Sora's shoulders, pressing himself as close as he could for the space of a split second before they released, and he backed away.

"Morning," Riku said, hands back at his sides. "Are you okay?"

Sora was sore, and tired; it still took him a few moments before he realized what Riku meant. "Yeah," he said at last, shifting his weight to the other foot. "I'm a bit sore, but I can walk. It doesn't hurt that badly."

Riku's eyes flashed once; Sora couldn't tell with what. "That's good," he responded. He twitched for a second in the manner of someone who wanted to move but hadn't quite decided to, before he reached out a proprietary hand and closed it around one of Sora's. "The cafeteria is still open for another hour and a half. We could go get breakfast."

Sora's stomach had been turning on itself for the past hour. When he'd tried to grab something from the refrigerator in their house, the smell of bread had made him think he would vomit. "I have Chemistry in a half hour," he said. "I haven't been doing well as I should."

"I know someone who has 31," Riku said. "You can use his notes."

There were inferences Sora could make there: the fact that Riku has an argument ready, and what that meant; the fact that Riku knew which Chem class Sora was taking, and what _that_ meant; the fact that Riku didn't look surprised, or sorry, or whatever face people made when you told them you were doing badly in a class-that fact, and what that meant.

"I don't know if I can eat," he said, because Sora always did prefer telling the truth. "I didn't wake up feeling very good."

"Then rest," Riku said, "or let me take you to Student Health. But don't go to class if you feel so sick you can't stomach food."

His chest would collapse on itself. He wondered why his ribcage suddenly felt as if it would soon crack.

Don't love me, he almost said, only just managing to clamp down on the words. You don't know me. I'm not the person you think. Perhaps things would be easier if he could admit that aloud. Maybe in the end it would save them both pain and time.

"I said I didn't know if I could eat," Sora said quietly. "Not that I wouldn't go."

Riku looked at him quietly, and then pulled Sora gently along.

Riku led him slowly, pulling him back every time Sora started to walk quickly enough that his steps took on more of a limp. Sora thought about insisting that he could walk himself, or that he'd pushed himself through more pain, or that he didn't want to hold his hand-his stomach hurt, his heart hurt, he didn't want anyone close enough to that misery that they could actually hold his hand. He didn't. He held Riku's hand tighter, feeling better about how clammy his palms were when he realized that Riku's were lightly sweating. The feel of it made something tight rise up in his throat.

By the time they reached the dining hall, most of the morning traffic had come and gone. There were students scattered, sleep-deprived and messy, at tables here or there, but the hall was mostly empty, and the coffee table was down to its last dregs. Sora made to grab a plate out of habit more than an actual desire to try to force anything down, but Riku tightened his hold on his hand. "I'll do it," he said, before Sora could question it. "Sit down and grab a place for us. Let me know if there's anything you want."

Sora stared after him long after Riku had grabbed a tray and gone. He tried to think about him, but his head had gone a little too full and it had become difficult to formulate his thoughts.

He sat at a table in the rear of the dining hall, where the sun streaming through the large, grand windows didn't hit so directly. He lay his head down on folded arms, noticing somewhat belatedly that his breathing had gone shallow and rushed; he slowed it as well as he could, forcing himself to take long, even breaths. Hayner and Selphie would be wondering where he was. He didn't often miss Chem; sucked too much at it to justify taking the time off when it was all he could do to keep up. They'd be worried. They'd probably be able to draw the connection to yesterday, and Riku.

Riku.

It was so difficult to think about Riku.

"You can sleep," Riku said.

Sora looked up. Riku was holding a tray overflowing with food. Sora didn't think it was all for him.

"If you're tired," Riku clarified. "You don't need to keep me company while I eat. I'll wake you up if that's what you want."

Sora pulled his voice out of himself sluggishly, as if it had taken him a moment to realize that Riku probably wanted a response. "No," he said. "I came here to sit with you. Please eat."

Riku obeyed. He grabbed the plates teetering on the tray and placed them on the table, waffles and hash browns and scrambled eggs and a ham omelet and twin glasses of chocolate milk. The scrambled eggs and hash browns were Riku's; he slid them over to his own space and began eating immediately. The rest, though, Sora didn't think were.

"Is it a coincidence?" he asked.

Riku, to his credit, didn't pretend he didn't know what Sora was talking about. "No," he said. "I loved you from nearly the beginning. Of course I figured out what you normally eat for breakfast. By this point, it would be more difficult not to."

The weight of that hurt a little. Sora wished that Riku were doing it on purpose. It would be easier to make himself end it if he thought Riku was trying to be manipulative, instead of stating a fact because he thought Sora felt the same.

"I won't be able to eat it all," Sora said at last, resting his head once more on his arms. "I wasn't lying about how I felt."

"I know," Riku said. "But I'd rather have it here in case you change your mind than have to worry about you not having the option to eat at all."

Riku ate in silence, keeping his eyes on his food for the most part, while Sora let his own stay closed and tried to focus on relearning how to steadily breathe. His chest felt the worst. He could ignore the dim, dull headache threatening against his temples if he tried hard; Sora didn't get headaches often enough to affect his life, but he was a student, and he'd been feeling low lately-they came. The stomach, the throat-difficult to manage, but Sora had always been good with pain. It was the inability to breathe that was causing him the most trouble. His heartbeat felt arrhythmic, stilted, painfully present in a way Sora had never before realized it could be. His breath sounded too loud against the crook of his elbow; he pushed his mouth tighter to it to try to muffle it, because if he didn't then Riku would hear, and that was the last thing Sora needed. Riku was focused on him. He couldn't bear the thought that Riku would hear.

A hand came to rest cautiously on his head. Sora pressed against it because if he didn't he thought he would do something worse.

Someone said, "Riku."

A tall redhead was walking up, wearing mostly black and a grin that was placid and vicious and sharp. He grabbed the chair beside him and dropped down into it, grabbing Riku's fork from out of his hand and spearing a piece of omelet. "Didn't see you," the boy said. "Thought you never skipped."

Riku stared at him silently a moment. "Not for the most part," he said at last. His hand slid from Sora's head. Sora distantly wished he could have the comfort back. "But there are exceptions for everything."

"I guess there are," the boy said. "You're Sora."

It was disorienting, that he actually wanted to be alone so badly that he couldn't even stomach the thought of seeing a stranger in front of him and knowing that he had to speak. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't remember you."

"You don't have to," the boy said. "We've never met. But you're Roxas's brother. And Zexion said you needed help with Chem."

Oh, Sora thought. Oh. "I didn't go to class today," he said. "I don't have notes."

"That's okay," Axel, because it was Axel, said. "I do. Which Riku probably told you, if he managed to drag you here instead of walking you to class." Sora didn't know how to respond to that. Thankfully, Axel didn't give him a chance to. "I'm free on Thursdays and Fridays, mostly," he continued, stealing another large forkful from Riku's plate. "And you're not paying me, because Zex is already giving me extra credit in lit, and if he finds out I'm extorting money from you too he'll probably find a way to wipe me from the face of the earth. Privileges of being an -in law, I guess." He grabbed a final bite and stood. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Get Riku to send me a message if you decide on a time to meet. I'll see you losers later."

Sora watched him go, wishing that he'd asked how he knew Roxas. He let his head come to rest again on his folded arms.

"I could help, you know," Riku said.

It took a minute to figure out what Riku was talking about. Riku was looking at him, face as closed off and blank as it always was-as it had been since yesterday, in those few minutes when all Sora had been able to see on his face had been desperate hope. His voice was steady, and sounded neither upset nor particularly interested. It hurt. Sora didn't know why.

"Zexion gave me his name," he said, because that was the truth. "He didn't-he thought I-he wanted someone to help me. I don't think he knew who else to choose."

"I'm better than he is," Riku said.

"Yes," Sora said. "But they thought I hated you."

It was the first time either of them had mentioned that. Sora looked at him, at the way something quick and shattered swept, just for an instant, over Riku's face, and wished he hadn't.

"I'm sorry," he said, throat tight and almost closed. "Please take me back to my room."

Riku gathered up the plates, uneaten and otherwise, and went to throw them away.

The walk back to his room was as quiet as the walk to the dining hall had been. Sora spent about a minute being grateful for that. He spent the next nine wishing Riku wouldn't leave him alone with his head. But that was unfair enough that even Sora could realize it. Sora hadn't told him anything; how could he expect Riku to know.

He got to his dorm. He opened the door.

Riku's hand closed around his. His eyes were blocked off, and old.

"Tell me if I can't come in," he said.

Strange, how thoroughly someone could wreck him from head to toe, just by looking at him as if he were good.

His heart hurt. Sora would do anything in the world if only he could make it so that his heart would not hurt.

"I asked you," Sora said.

"You asked me to take you here," Riku said. "That's not permission to come inside."

"It's not," Sora agreed. "But you can. I want you to."

Riku kissed him.

If you had asked Sora what Riku probably kissed like a month ago, Sora would not have been able to tell you. He'd never thought about it. He'd never wanted to. He would have frowned, and shrugged, and said something cavalier and dismissive. In the minutes before he fell asleep, he would remember the question, and would think the word _harsh._

Riku kissed him like you kissed someone who would dissolve into foam-hands at his cheeks, mouth open and unmoving, like he thought any motion would send Sora skittering back, like he was worried about pressing too hard but couldn't stop himself from having at least this much. He kissed like he was terrified of Sora pushing him back, like he was already thinking about the face he would make when Sora inevitably took a step away.

Sora didn't think he could deal with that.

He kissed him. Sora wrapped his arms around Riku's neck as tightly as they would go and kissed him back.

For the space of a breath, every muscle in Riku's body went stiff. And then whatever had been holding him back snapped.

Sora's back hit the door before he'd even realized that Riku had shoved it closed. The air rushed out of him in a gasp, disorienting and heady, and immediately Riku was there, lapping against Sora's mouth as if he wanted to ask for permission but couldn't remember how to say the words out loud. There were hands on his thighs, nails digging into his pants, and his legs were around Riku's waist and he couldn't figure out how they'd gotten there but he didn't care because where else would they be. He groaned, sucked Riku's tongue into his mouth, eating up the sound that Riku made, like he was dying.

"Sora," Riku said against his mouth. "_Sora._"

Sora kissed him again so that he wouldn't need to hear his name in Riku's voice, wrapping his legs tighter around him, and Riku moaned and tore his mouth away to suck at the crook of Sora's neck.

"Forever," Riku said, mouthing at Sora's throat as if he wanted to turn it black and blue. "I loved you. I love you. Everything. You're perfect, you're good-"

"Don't," Sora said. "Kiss me, just kiss me."

"Kind," Riku said, and his mouth was on Sora's neck and his teeth were scraping and hard. "Sweet, good."

"Don't," Sora said, holding Riku's head to his neck as if he'd die if Riku for a moment stopped. "Don't."

"You're everything," Riku said. "You are all that I ever wanted anyone to be."

"I said," Sora said, and pushed him away so roughly he almost fell, "don't."

Riku's face went a little white. Fair, Sora thought, with so much rancor he felt a little sick; his own face had probably lost all its blood from the moment Riku first said the word _good. _

"Don't say that," Sora said, the words tripping out of his mouth like they belonged to someone else. "Don't do that. Don't tell me things about myself that aren't real, because I can't stand hearing it and I can't stand the thought that you're going to find out and realize that none of it was true-"

"They are," Riku interrupted. "Why would you say they weren't. You spend every day trying to be kind to people. How would I ever have a chance to realize I'm wrong, when all you ever do is-"

"I'm not," Sora shouted, and he didn't mean to, didn't want to shout, but his heart had started thumping again, loud enough that he could hear the rush of it in his ears, and what else was he supposed to do when Riku loved him because he thought Sora was someone he no longer was. "I'm cruel, I'm terrible. You can't build me up to be someone larger than I am when I'm just a person."

"I'm not building you up to be anyone."

"You are," Sora said. "But you're wrong. I'm not anything that you want to be. I'm not anything that anybody should want to be. I don't understand why you love me. There is literally no reason you-"

"Stop," Riku said. Because it was the first time Riku had ever asked him to, Sora did without a second thought.

Riku hadn't taken a step towards him, and he hadn't taken another step back. He was still standing motionless, five feet separating them. At first glance, he looked almost as he normally did; Riku didn't often let his emotions run away with him. His mouth was carefully expressionless; his face was carefully blank. But his lips were the sort of pale that only ever occurred when you'd been blindsided, and there was a wrecked quality to his eyes that made Sora want, for a single moment of heart-shattering nausea, want to cry.

"I love you," Riku said, "because you're kind."

Sora brought his arms up to block his eyes.

"I love you," Riku continued, "because you try hard. I love you because you don't know how to give up. I love you because you help people, even when you don't know them, even when you don't have a reason. I love you because you feel guilty every time you show up late. I love you because you're bad at memorizing things and bad at concentrating on things and I still see you every day in class, taking notes like all you want is to be better than you already are. I love you because you can't stand your friends being sad. I love you because last December I saw you with everyone else having a snowball fight, and you still hated me, but you smiled and wished me a Merry Christmas anyway. I love you because you've spent the last two months breathing like you've forgotten how to, and the only reason you haven't told anyone except for the people who can pick up on it on their own is because you don't want anyone to waste time worrying about you when they have so many things to worry about themselves."

Sora was shaking so hard he thought he'd fall out of his skin. That was why he didn't move when he heard Riku step closer, and why he let him when Riku closed his hands carefully around Sora's wrists and pulled his arms gently down.

"You don't have to love me back," Riku said quietly, the sort of voice you used when you wanted more than anything not to push. "I never expected anything. If one day you get tired of this, or if you start hating me again, or even if you decide that you were wrong, and that you didn't actually like me that much in the first place. I'd understand. I know I don't always make it easy. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to speak to me. You don't have to love me back. Sora." He stepped closer, bent their foreheads together. "Sora, you don't have to do a thing."

"Riku," Sora whispered.

"Just don't make me stop," Riku said. "Just, please. Please let me love you."

He was beginning to think he was using him.

Two months, he thought. That was what Riku had said.

There were things Sora was capable of, and things he wasn't. Sora was capable of doing things he knew he would regret, out of nothing more than affection, or thoughtlessness, or an inability to watch someone he cared for suffer without offering to help. He was capable of pettiness, of petulance, of forgetting that refusing to make a decision was a decision in and of itself. He was even, he thought, capable of being cruel.

He wasn't capable of listening to Riku say that without feeling as if his whole world had moved.

His chest was pounding. His throat was thick. His heart had gone heavy and weighted and like lead, all of it centered on Riku, and he didn't know whether it hurt or didn't hurt because his stomach was shifting but in the inside of his head it was like something had exploded, and for a moment all Sora could think, in a looping refrain, was _he loves me. He loves me._

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly, the words whispered almost against Riku's mouth. "I didn't mean to say what I said in the dining hall. I should have known it would hurt you."

"It was the truth," Riku said. He nudged their foreheads together again, eyes furrowed and closed. "You hated me at first. I always knew."

"I shouldn't have," Sora said. "I never had a reason. I don't know why I did. You just made me so mad."

"I know," Riku said. "I didn't mean to. I didn't want you to. It was only that I didn't know how to act. I'd never felt for anyone what I felt for you."

Sora knew.

I don't know if I can do this, he thought, hands tangled deeper into the folds of Riku's shirt. Everything about the way this begun was wrong. I don't think this is something I can continue.

Riku was so warm against him. Riku loved him. Riku had seen exactly how low Sora had felt like he'd sunk.

He couldn't let go. How was he supposed to let go. beneath his fingers.

"Can I kiss you?" Riku asked quietly, the words whispered into the space between their mouths.

Sora closed his eyes. He could see Riku's expression imprinted on the insides of his eyes.

"I can't have sex right now," he said.

"I know," Riku said. He nudged their noses together. "I won't ask you to. But a kiss. If you say yes. If you let me. If you let me, I'd like to kiss you."

There were things Sora was capable of, and things he wasn't.

Sora thought of two months. Sora thought of Riku watching him. Sora thought of distance, and aloofness, and how it had felt to realize, one year ago, when Sora had thrown a snowball at Roxas's face, and over his shoulder had seen Riku, and smiled at him, and seen him turn away-how it had felt to realize that someone he admired so fiercely didn't think about him at all.

Don't, a small voice inside of him said. This isn't going to end well for you.

Don't.

Sora slid his hands into Riku's hair, and kissed him.


	4. A Blindingly Bright Sunlight

**Author's Notes: **do you remember when i was emotionally removed enough that i could make jokes about not owning kh. me neither; chapter title from l'arc en ciel's heaven's drive; this relationship is still obsessive and unhealthy. i apologize for how i roll; sora's fairy tale is original in that i made it up on the spot but now i read it and realize it's basically enchanted husband meets the little mermaid, so.

**Dedication: **To **The Writer You Fools,** for whom this fic is written.

* * *

**Advanced Theory  
****Chapter Four: A Blindingly Bright Sunlight**

The next several days fell into a pattern. Every night, Sora would retreat to his room, or Roxas's room. Whichever gave him the greater likelihood of being alone that day. Every morning, Riku would knock on Sora's door an hour before their first class, and would take him to breakfast. The only exceptions were the days were Sora wasn't sure he really wanted to get out of bed. He mostly asked Riku to kiss him then.

They didn't talk very much. Riku, because Riku didn't often talk much. Sora, because his lungs had spent the last few days (months, really, but who was counting) having a gross overreaction to stress, and that made it difficult to speak. Sometimes he thought Riku didn't mind. That was difficult to believe for long, though.

Roxas and Axel showed up sometimes. Roxas didn't really speak a lot, either.

He hadn't talked to Kairi in a week.

* * *

Three weeks later.

Sora opened his eyes in the dining hall, because Riku had called his name, and he had been fairly close to falling back asleep.

He looked up slowly, the way you did when you were so tired you couldn't even muster up the energy to be startled at someone unexpectedly saying your name. Riku was watching him the way he always watched him. Sora wondered whether the sight of him would ever not make Sora ache.

"Get up," Riku said. "It's ten 'til. If we don't leave now, we're going to be late."

Sora blinked up at him, the words garbled in his head for a few seconds before he managed to make sense of them and realize Riku was right. He stood, a little more unevenly than he probably should have. Riku reached out a hand towards Sora's elbow to steady him. The place where it touched felt vaguely cool. Sora thought that probably meant he had a mild fever, but didn't want to say so. Riku would worry.

"You should go home if you're still tired," Riku said. "You're not going to be able to concentrate in class like this."

Sora shook his head, rubbing at his face. "I'll take notes. I'll read them over later."

"You'd do better just downloading the reading online."

"I'm already having a hard time," Sora said. "I don't want to miss again."

Riku watched him carefully. Sora looked away so he wouldn't have to recognize whatever emotion was there.

"There's a test in Chem next week," Riku said finally.

Sora nodded.

"I could come over this weekend, then," Riku said. "If that's something you want."

It would be different if Riku didn't always ask Sora whether the things Riku offered were things he wanted. Sora would have had a much easier time holding on to his anger if Riku didn't make try to make it perfectly clear that every step of their relationship was always going to be Sora's choice. Maybe this could be over by now. Maybe Sora wouldn't have started needing the attention Riku gave him, because those were the only moments where he felt as if he was almost the person he'd once been.

"Yes," Sora said, instead of what he thought, which was _I'm scared I'm never going to relearn how to be the person I was before I met you._ "Axel can't come over on weekends. I'd appreciate it." Then the truth, because when he started talking he couldn't help but tell the truth, "I want to see you."

Riku jerked towards him as if he hadn't known how to stop himself. Sora shied back because he didn't know how to stop that, either.

"After class," he said, throat oddly closed. "I'll wait for you. Come and pick me up."

"Yeah," Riku said. "Anything you want."

Riku left afterwards, Sora staring after him with his face hot and his fingertips quivering for much longer than he should have. Sora walked to his classroom quickly. Hayner and Selphie sat at the rear of the classroom. Kairi sat beside them.

For the space of one single, horrible second, Sora wondered what they would do if he sat somewhere else.

He took his seat beside them quietly, slinging his backpack onto the floor and pulling his Psych textbooks out of them.

Hayner glanced over at him, raising his eyebrows. "Cutting it pretty close," he said. "Prof's gonna show up soon."

"I still got here before he did," Sora said, then hid a flinch, because his voice had sounded a little too flat there, and he couldn't let his friends think he didn't want to be with them. "Anyway, he likes me. He'd forgive me if I was late just once."

"Your definition of _likes me_ is subjective at best and really really flawed at worse," Selphie said. "Xaldin doesn't want to stick you on a slab and use you as a pincushion. I don't think that means he likes you."

"From him that's practically a ringing endorsement," Sora said. "So, yes. It does."

And perhaps it would have ended like that, with Hayner and Selphie laughing and Kairi**—**Kairi quiet and watchful, but not saying anything, which was good because the moment she did Sora knew he would probably crack, if Hayner hadn't chosen that moment to ask, "So, are you still stringing the asshole along?"

The smile slid sideways off Sora's face.

Beside him, Selphie sighed a little dreamily. "I think it's nice," she said. "Riku loving him for so long, and Sora finally returning his feelings, despite the fact that he used to hate his guts."

Very quietly, Kairi said, "don't."

"It's stupid," Hayner said.

"It's _romantic,_" Selphie said. "It's a love that's overcome hate and adversity and extreme dislike, prevailing and triumphing above all!"

Hayner snorted. "He doesn't love him."

"Hayner, Selphie," Kairi said, voice still a whisper. "Don't."

"Of course he does," Selphie said. "Given how much Sora hated him at first, it would be pretty difficult to manage going on a month if he didn't love him now."

"That's because Sora has a guilt problem," Hayner said, yawning loudly. "He'd go out with anyone, if he felt bad enough about it."

"It's love."

"It's not."

"I said," Kairi said, and her voice was loud enough that every head in the classroom snapped to her, "_don't_."

Hayner and Selphie's mouths clacked closed. Sora would have laughed, maybe, except in the instant before she'd spoken Sora had jumped out of his seat, tripping over his backpack, and shot out of the room, and he wasn't there to witness.

Kairi found him in the bathroom.

She reached past his shoulder and turned off the faucet. Her other hand came around his waist and tugged him back, slowly so that he wouldn't bump his head against the steel tap. She turned him around carefully, palms going to his dripping wet cheeks, thumbs wiping at the droplets rolling down his eyes, and her eyes were wide and blue and he loved her so much, his sister, his friend, who trusted him and thought highly of him and who could never be allowed to think that he was anything less than what she wanted him to be.

"Sora," she said. "It's okay. It's okay."

He shook his head, stopped shaking it, tried to wipe off the water he'd just splattered over her cheeks. "It's not. I'm not."

"You are," she said. "You're good. You're strong. You're only doing what you think is right."

"I'm not," Sora said. "I'm scared, and I'm lonely, and I want him, I want him so much, and I don't know if I want him because I want him or if I want him because he makes me stop thinking, and maybe if I want him then I didn't go out with him because I'm pathetic and I'm not going to mess him up." He released a breath that was too much like a sob, burying his face in his hands, then letting Kairi pull them away and pull him to her shoulder instead. "I don't want to mess him up. I don't want to be messed up."

"It's all right if you are," she said. "It's okay to feel sad."

"I don't want to be," Sora said. "I want to be happy again. I want to feel good again. I don't want to believe that I'm the kind of person who could hate someone just because he didn't like me, or because he didn't look at me, or because he made me feel like I was less than he. I wish I had never done this. I wish I'd never realized I could be mean."

"Everyone hurts people sometimes."

"But I don't want to," Sora said. "I never wanted that to be me."

Which, in the end, was the whole problem. It had always been the problem.

In another world, Riku would have confessed to him. Sora would have said no. That might have been the end of it. Or it might not have been. Maybe Sora would have watched him. Maybe Sora would have caught the way Riku looked at him sometimes; would have grown to realize how desperately Riku tried to keep his emotions in check. Maybe he would have seen Riku's face, implacable as stone, and come to the epiphany that all it had ever been was a mask. Riku felt so strongly. Riku tried so hard to make sure that no one knew where his weaknesses were. Maybe Sora would have fallen in love with that. Maybe even if he hadn't, Sora would have wanted Riku in his life.

The issue was Sora.

Love didn't always fix everything. Love didn't even often fix everything. If that was the case, no one would ever have a reason to be sad.

Sora wanted so badly not to be sad.

"You're good," Kairi said, quietly, against Sora's hair, because she'd slid down to sit on the floor and Sora had slid down with her, forehead still buried against her shoulder and hair still dripping onto her blouse. "And I know you don't believe that now, because you're sad. And I know you don't want to hear that now, because you're sad. And that's okay, Sora—it's okay. But I'll say it until you believe it, and if you disappear again I'll pray it until you believe it, and if you can't believe it now then I'll believe it for you until you believe it, because you are my best friend and all I want for you is to be glad. This isn't going to last forever. You're not going to feel like this forever. You're going to forgive yourself. You're going to love yourself. You're going to remember that you deserve to be happy. You will. You are not always going to be sad."

Sora curled his hands tighter into her shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I left you alone," he said. "I was so scared you'd hate me."

"I'd never hate you," Kairi said. "You're my best friend."

"I was wrong," he said. "All I feel lately is wrong."

"I know that," Kairi said. "And sometimes you have been. But feeling the way you feel isn't wrong. It's not what I want for you. It's not what you deserve. I want you happy. I want you to never again look the way you just looked. But don't make yourself feel worse by thinking that feeling sad is wrong."

Sora sat sprawled in his best friend's lap, while five rooms away his classmates and friends listened to Xaldin talk about anxiety, while a campus away his brother argued with someone who tried to convince him that he cared, while Riku sat in class and thought about how much easier things would have been if Riku had learned earlier how important it was to be kind, and he held onto her, and felt his fingers, just a little, lessen their trembles.

"He loves me," he said, when his heart finally began to slow. "I think he loves me."

"I know he does," Kairi said. "Do you want him to stop?"

"No," Sora said. "It feels good. It feels better than it would feel if he didn't."

Kairi tightened her hold on him. "And what about you?"

Sora closed his eyes. "I don't know."

* * *

Sora left before class ended. Kairi said he should; that she wanted to talk to Hayner and Selphie before Sora did. Sora agreed with her. He didn't know if it was because she was his sister and he'd listen to anything she said; if it was because he didn't want his friends to look at him; or if it was because he wanted to see Riku. He did. He wanted to so badly it was almost a physical ache.

There was no room for doubt or worry when he was with Riku. There wasn't room for anything except wanting him. The guilt and self-loathing made that want feel heavy. But it was still better than having to think about anything else.

_You're trading one obsession in for another,_ he thought to himself, then tried not to think about that anymore.

"Sora."

His head jerked up.

Riku stood before him, close enough that Sora wasn't sure how he'd closed so much distance between them without Sora having heard. The sun was at his back, bright. It hurt his eyes. They had gone a little too wide to squint.

"Did I keep you waiting?" Riku asked.

"No," Sora said, standing. "I got here early. It's not that you were late."

"Wasn't what I asked," Riku said. He lifted a hand, paused, then swiped away Sora's bangs, quickly, as if he were making himself. "Xaldin doesn't normally let his classes out early."

"He didn't," Sora said. "I wasn't feeling well." The truth, even if not the complete one. "I couldn't make it all the way through. I have Kairi in the class with me. And Hayner and Selphie. And I'll e-mail him later. They'll let me borrow their notes."

Riku's gaze swept over him, as if trying to hear everything Sora couldn't bring himself to tell him. "I'm sorry for not noticing," he said. "I knew you felt tired, but I didn't think it was that bad."

"It wasn't," Sora said. "I just got a little disoriented. Don't worry about it. It's fine."

Riku watched him carefully for a few seconds. Sora wished he'd had longer to study the minute muscle contractions in his face; maybe then he'd be able to tell exactly what Riku was thinking. Whether he believed him or not. Whether Riku believed any of it or not. Whether Riku knew how badly Sora was trying to tell the truth, and how thoroughly he sometimes couldn't. What Riku planned to do about it, if he did know.

"I want to hear about it," Riku said at last. "I'm not telling you to tell me. That's up to you. But if you did, I would want to know."

"Oh," Sora said, and swallowed hard. "I know."

The hand in Sora's hair twitched. Sora grabbed it so that Riku wouldn't pull away. Riku's eyes shifted to it. His mouth opened so quickly Sora felt sure he hadn't actually meant to speak.

"Will you go out with me?"

Sora shifted back, shifted forward when he realized what he'd done, lowered his hands to his stomach; thought about telling Riku that they were already going out, but realized that wasn't what Riku meant. "Where?"

"The movies," Riku said. "Dinner. Anything. I just want to be with you."

Sora had Riku's mouth against his before he could think about it, kissing him as if he could bury the memory of the expression Riku had worn then with nothing but the feel of Riku's tongue against his.

Sora didn't think Riku had meant to say that. Sora didn't think Riku had really realized he'd said that. The last time Riku had made any sort of profession along those lines had been the day Sora had first lied to him, and he'd had a larger reason then.

He wanted this to end. He didn't want this to end.

"Not tonight," he said. He kissed Riku again, sucking his lower lip into his mouth, tugging it lightly as he pulled away. "Tomorrow. After eight."

"Eight," Riku said, pulling Sora back, then resting their foreheads together. "I'll call you. Please give me your phone number."

Sora nudged against him, eyes closed. "You have my number."

"I don't," Riku said. "You never gave it to me. I never asked. Let me call you."

Sora breathed, and breathed, and tried to make himself hate the warm comfort of Riku's breath against his mouth almost as much as he wanted more. "Give me your hand."

Riku did.

Sora held it between his fingers. There were callouses on the fingertips, the knuckles, the palm, hard and thick; the sort of callouses that developed from holding weapons, fighting. Sora had felt every one of those callouses on his face. Riku touched him so softly. He touched him like he was never sure whether he needed to hold Sora tighter or let him go.

He penned his phone number along the back of Riku's hand, wishing desperately for a breathless half-second that he could bring himself to pull those fingers to his mouth and kiss them. "Not in the middle of class," he said. "But otherwise. Whenever you want."

Riku watched him, and then grabbed Sora's hand.

The remainder of their walk was quiet. Riku's hand was hot in his, and sweaty, fumbling with Sora's fingers as if he wasn't sure whether he wanted to clasp them together or slip his own between. Sora clutched them as tightly as he could, because the more it hurt the less he needed to concentrate on the way his heart felt as if it were failing. There was a term for that. For the way someone could use pain to distract themselves from the things they felt.

They said goodbye and Sora went inside. Sora didn't kiss him again before he left. He put a lot of effort into not thinking about how much he wanted to.

Roxas was sitting at his desk when Sora walked in. He was bowed over his desk, mountains of textbooks spilling over the sides, sticky notes protruding from every available (and some unavailable) surface. His back was straight. He didn't look as if he was paying attention to Sora at all.

Neither he nor Sora said a word.

The hours passed slowly. Roxas didn't speak to him. Roxas didn't often speak to anyone when he was working; Roxas had always been serious. Sora wasn't. Sora tried hard in school because he tried hard in everything, but that sort of thing came difficult to him. Not with Roxas. He could bury himself in textbooks the way Sora had once been able to bury himself in his friends: wholly, without reservation, until he'd wrung himself dry. Hours spent working in silence were normal with Roxas. It wasn't anything to worry about. Sora worried anyway; he thought that he'd probably lost the ability to do otherwise.

He didn't know what to do. That's what it came down to: one month later, he didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to stop feeling like this, he didn't know what it would take to be able to exist without feeling as if someone were pressing slowly down on his heart. He didn't know what to do about Riku. He didn't know what to do about Roxas. He didn't know what to do about how fully he hated himself for being the sort of person who could hurt someone, and take pleasure from hurting someone, and the worst thing was that he wanted to run away, because maybe if he ran then he wouldn't have to feel like this.

Sora wanted him. He hated himself for wanting him. He hated himself for not knowing whether he wanted him because he wanted him or if he wanted him because that would be the only way this could work out, and he hated himself for having done what he did to end up in this situation, and he hated himself—

He hated himself.

He hadn't always been like this. He'd been so much happier once. But he couldn't remember that. He couldn't remember how confidence had once felt.

Sora curled under his covers, curled over his books. He didn't think about how his brother hadn't said a word to him all day. He slept.

He woke to the sound of the phone ringing.

It was dark out, the lights turned off and the sun outside gone. Roxas was asleep in the bed on the other side of the room, curled up tightly under the covers and faced away. Sora grabbed his phone before the sound could wake him.

"Sora," Riku said.

Sora's eyes squeezed shut.

"Yeah," he said, then said it again, clutching the phone to his ear and turning away from Roxas. "Yeah. I'm here."

"I know," Riku said. There was a pause on the other end of the phone; something that sounded like rustling, or humming, or the slow inhale that came when you opened your mouth to speak but couldn't decide what to say. "I woke you up."

Sora nudged his face against his pillow as if it would keep him from feeling all the things he felt. "It's okay. I have so much work. I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"You should," Riku said. "You couldn't even make it through class."

"It wasn't because I was tired," Sora said. "It didn't have anything to do with that."

Riku fell quiet. Sora thought about all the things he couldn't do.

His heart had started pounding again, twisting and squirming in his chest, louder than it did normally. His hands were trembling with the desire to grab hold of something, and he didn't know what except that all he could think of was Riku, because Riku would crawl over him and press him down and with the weight of Riku's body over him maybe Sora's insides would finally stop trying to move.

He wanted this to end. He didn't want this to end.

"Sora," Riku said. "I want to talk to you."

Sora wanted him. He couldn't let this end.

"Yeah," he said, quieter than he meant. "About?"

"Nothing," Riku said. "Anything. I don't know. I just want to hear your voice."

Closed his eyes, bit down on his hand. "Don't tell me that."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize either," Sora said. "Don't say anything that makes me remember how much you like me."

"That's a lot to ask for."

"It's not," Sora said. "You're good at hiding it most of the time. You're good at treating me like you don't care."

"That's not true."

Sora buried his face in his arms. "It's not," he agreed. "I'm sorry. That wasn't what I meant."

"Sora," Riku said.

He wanted this to end. So badly it hurt him, he didn't want it to end.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I feel sick, and I don't know what to do."

Which was closer to the truth than he'd ever told Riku, but he couldn't summon up shame and he couldn't manage regret.

He hadn't been made for this. He hadn't been made to be the sort of person who could live entirely in their head. But this had happened, and now Sora spent every day feeling as if his body was inside out and everyone around him could see every feeling he possessed, and he didn't know how to stop it and he didn't know how to make it better and all he wanted in life was to be the person he'd once been, because that person hadn't felt like this.

"Sora," Riku said. "I want you to tell me a story."

Sora's breath caught, and then, very gradually, slowed. "That's not something people ask for," he said.

"Yes they do," Riku said. "Everyone loves stories."

"But people don't ask for them," Sora said. "People don't call their friends and ask them to tell them stories."

"Maybe not," Riku said. "But it's what I want. Tell me anything. Fairy tales, memories, anything. Just talk. I want to know."

Talk, Riku said. Just talk.

Sora was going to cry.

He bit at his palm, hard, just long enough to make sure that his voice wouldn't crack when he spoke. "My mom used to tell me stories," he said. "When I was young."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Sora said. "Fairy tales. About friendship. Love."

"Tell me one," Riku said. "Whichever one."

What he would give to have Riku here right now.

"Once upon a time," he said.

"There was a little girl who lived with her mother in a pretty cottage in the outskirts of the woods. She loved her mother very much, and she loved her friends very much, and she loved the world very much. She was the kindest child who'd ever existed, and the animals who lived in the forest could sense this about her, and they'd flock to her like sheep."

Sora took a breath.

"Let her be a boy," Riku said.

Sora's mouth shut. He opened it; let it again fall shut. "It's a love story," Sora finally said.

"I know," Riku said, and very quietly laughed. "That's why."

Sora stopped.

Kairi's laugh reminded him of the tinkling of a thousand bells and wind chimes, tapping against each other on a bright summer's day. Roxas's laugh sounded like the clacking of fireworks, loud and low and oddly comforting. Riku's laugh didn't remind him of any sound. But when Riku laughed, Sora closed his eyes and saw light glow.

"Once upon a time," he said, "there was a boy, and he loved life so much."

Talk.

"One day, he visited the town near the woods, and as he walked down the streets, he saw a group of other little boys. They were teasing a dove. The dove was hurt. It was flapping around. No matter how hard it tried, though, it couldn't fly away, and the boys were crowded around it and they wouldn't let it go. The boy rescued it, he chased them away and ran back home."

Just talk.

"They took care of it," Sora said. "He and his mother. For weeks. Through the days where the bird would peck at him when the boy tried to feed it, through the days where the bird wouldn't let him come near. They took care of it. They tried very hard."

His mother had loved this story. She'd loved it a lot.

"What was his name," Riku asked.

Sora wiped at his face, shaking his head to clear it. "He didn't have one. My mother never told me what it was."

"Call him Sora," Riku said.

Sora's heart did something that made him feel, just for a moment, as if he would physically flinch.

It took him a few moments to find his voice again, or to push it through the sudden lump that had risen in his throat, or to make sure that when it did emerge, that it wouldn't break. He ground his palms against his eyelids, as if doing that would keep the unexpected wetness inside. "I don't know if I can do that," he said finally, voice small and cracking anyway. "I don't know if I can make this about you and me."

"You don't have to," Riku said. "It doesn't have to be me. It doesn't even have to be you. I just wanted you to remember. You're like him. You're good."

He didn't want this to end.

"I get scared sometimes," Sora said. "Of all the things I feel about you."

Riku made a noise in his throat that sounded like Sora felt. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want you to."

Sora breathed, and breathed, and breathed. Riku waited for him.

"He never kept the dove in a cage," Sora said at last. Inhale, exhale. "He let it wander wherever it wanted. Around the room, at first. Farther, once the dove finally relearned how to fly. The dove always came back. Even after he'd healed, every night he'd take a pebble in his beak and toss it at the boy's bedroom window. And the boy would open the window and let the bird in, and the bird would always bring a small branch from an arbutus tree, with pink and white flowers blossoming from the limb. And…" Sora took a deep breath. He pulled the covers over his head and curled up, clutching the phone to his ear. "And Riku loved Sora very much."

There was silence on the other end. Sora could no longer hear him breathe.

Maybe Riku was feeling the way Sora had felt for the last month. Sora didn't know whether that thought made him want to apologize or say _please._

"He loved Sora so much, in fact, that one day he flew away from the house and into the very center of the forest to visit the lady who ruled over the woods. He told her everything. He told her about crashing into a window and falling from the sky, about the boys who teased him, and about Sora. He told her that Sora had nursed him. Had given him a place to rest his head. He told her that he loved him. He said that he'd give up everything, if only he could be human.

"The Lady listened. She agreed to grant Riku his wish. Her only condition was that Riku would need to secure Sora's love within one month. Her magic would only last that long. If Sora fell in love with him, their love would keep Riku human. Otherwise, he'd turn back into a bird, and would never have another chance.

"Riku agreed. He had no choice.

"And so the Lady turned him into a human, into a beautiful boy. Riku ran to the cottage, as well as he was able to on legs that had never before been able to run. When he reached it, though, Sora was gone. He searched and searched. For hours he searched, until he finally came to the village where Sora had found him first. Sora was playing with the other children. He was having fun. He saw Riku staring at him. He asked Riku if he wanted to play.

"Riku didn't know how to speak.

"Riku had been a bird. He'd never understood the things that Sora told him. He knew that Sora was good to him, and that Sora was kind. But the things Sora had said to him, as he recovered in the cottage—Riku had never known. Becoming a human didn't mean he'd learned human speech.

"And so, because Riku would not speak, and because he wouldn't react, and because he did not know how to work the muscles of his face to make a smile, would never do anything except watch them the way birds watched people, like humans were lower than them, like birds stood above, Sora and the other children shied away. They thought he was looking down on them. They thought he was cruel."

Sora could no longer hear Riku breathing. He'd long since stopped being able to control the clench of his throat.

"Riku ran back to the woods," Sora said. "He kept watch over Sora for the remainder of his time. He kept watch when Sora started leaving the window open. He kept watch when Sora gave up on his bird returning, and started letting it close. And then at the end of the month, Riku went back to the center of the forest. He found the Lady waiting for him. He asked her why she'd let him do that to himself. She asked him why she granted wishes when she knew he would never have a chance.

"The Lady didn't answer. But she gave him a single branch of the arbutus tree.

"Riku hadn't learned how to speak. He hadn't learned how to express himself. A month is a short time to learn anything, especially when all you do is wait. He ran anyway. He ran to Sora's house. He ran to Sora's door. And he banged on it, and banged on it, and banged on it, until Sora tumbled out.

"He didn't know what Sora said. He didn't know what the expression on his face meant. But Riku had only minutes left. What did it matter if Sora hated him now—he'd love him when Riku was a bird again. Nothing mattered beyond that.

"Riku took Sora's hands in his, and gave him the branch of the arbutus tree."

The silence that fell then stretched for almost a minute.

"What happened," Riku said finally. The words cracked; there was something wrong with his voice. "What did he say?"

Sora closed his eyes, shook his head, pushed it hard against the pillow because maybe if he passed out he wouldn't have to answer. "I don't know."

"Of course you do," Riku said. "It's your story. You have to know."

"I don't," Sora said. "She left before she finished telling it. I've never known what he said."

The world around him was quiet. Riku was quiet. The beat of Sora's heart had stilled slightly, had gone slower and softer than it had been in months, since the day something had cracked within him and his life had suddenly become something he was unable to take. He breathed. It felt natural, somehow. He breathed.

"What does it mean," Riku said, quiet and strange. "The arbutus. If it means anything, what does it mean?"

Sora turned onto his side. "It doesn't matter."

"It's not a rose," Riku said. "It's not a lily. It's not the type of flower you hear about every day. If she chose it, it was for a reason. What does it mean?"

He didn't want this to end.

"Love," Sora said, against the cushion of his arms. "Thee only do I love."

Inhale, exhale. Riku's voice, when he spoke, sounded as if it came from a very long distance away. "So every day," Riku said, "the bird would knock on the boy's window and give him a flowering branch from an arbutus."

It wouldn't, wouldn't end.

"I'm tired, Riku," Sora whispered. "I'm going to go to bed."

"I love you."

Sora's breath caught in his throat.

"I love you," Riku said again. "I love you today, I'll love you tomorrow. I love you even when I can't say it, I love you even when I don't know how to show it, I love you even when I'm so terrified that you'll take it back that I can barely smile at you. I love you with reason and without reason and I would give you everything, every flower of every tree, and it doesn't matter how that story ends because I will love you forever, I will love you forever, and nothing in my life will ever matter more to me than th-"

"Riku."

Sora heard a quiet clack. Someone took a shuddering breath. For the life of him he wasn't sure whether it had been Riku or not.

"I'm sorry," Riku said. "It wasn't supposed to be about me."

"It's fine," Sora said. "It's good. Thank you. Thank you so much."

For a moment, he was sure Riku would just say goodbye and hang up. He didn't. Very quietly, Riku asked, "What for?"

Sora pressed his cheek into his pillow. "My chest doesn't hurt," he said. "It's—been. A long time. Since I didn't hurt."

Quiet, quiet. The spaces between Sora's fingers felt empty. He didn't say a word.

"I love you," Riku said at last. "Good night."

"Night," Sora whispered, and ended the call.

It took him a few moments to get his fingers to release the phone. He did, finally, exhaling. He turned onto his side.

On the other end of the room, the light of a street lamp caught in Roxas's open eyes.

It wasn't shame that came over him, or nausea. Sora felt too tired for shame. He'd probably been too tired for shame since the day he told Riku that he was in love with him, and even if he had still possessed the ability to feel extreme depths of emotion, Kairi had bled the worse of it out of him this morning. It was only something a little like sadness. That was all it was.

Roxas watched him. He scooted to the edge of the bed.

Sora breathed. And then, slowly, he slid out of bed and tip-toed across the room into his brother's arms.

"I'm sorry," he said, against his brother's neck. "I'm sorry that this is something I'm making you do."

Roxas slid his arms around Sora's shoulders, slowly, as if his body couldn't catch up with his head. "Don't apologize. You haven't done anything wrong."

They lay in Roxas's bed, quiet, long enough that Sora's breaths, which had sped up when he'd realized that Roxas had been listening to him, that he could have heard it all, began to slow. Roxas was breathing evenly, the kind of measured in-and-out that only came when a person was forcing themselves still. His heart was a chaotic counterpoint; Sora could feel the frenetic beat of it against his chest.

"I don't know what to do," Roxas said quietly.

Sora shook his head. "You don't have to do anything."

"I do," Roxas said. "Of course I do. You're having nervous breakdowns in classrooms. Of course there's something I have to do."

An hour ago, Sora would have flinched. But Riku had bled that from him, too.

"It's not your fault," Sora said.

"It is," Roxas said. "You're my brother."

"If it were possible to make me feel better just by loving me," Sora said, "you would have done it months ago. It's not your fault. It's not his fault. It's no one's but mine."

"You know that's not true."

"Sometimes," Sora admitted. "But it's hard to help what I feel."

Roxas didn't answer immediately. His hands were cold and loose around Sora's shoulders, distant in a way Roxas normally wasn't. Sora knew what distance meant, when it came from Roxas. It hurt.

"I can end it," Roxas said finally. "I'll make him leave, if that's what you want."

Sora's eyes closed. "It's not."

"I know," Roxas said. "I know. But that doesn't mean it's the right decision. He's turned you inside out."

"He wasn't the reason I turned out like this," Sora said.

"But he's making it worse," Roxas said. "He feels too much. He needs too much. Relationships aren't supposed to work like that. This isn't something I ever wanted for you."

"I'm sorry," Sora said. "But I want him. Please don't make me go."

Quiet. Strange, how difficult it was to see.

"My head hurts," Sora said. "My heart hurts. Sometimes I wake up and all I want to do is go back to sleep, and it's not because I'm tired, it's because I'm _tired,_ and I don't want to think." He took a long, shuddering breath. "But he helps. He helps. He loves me. He likes me. I told him that I felt sick and he told me to talk, and I talked, and talked, and he listens, he wraps me up, and when I'm with him I don't have to think, he doesn't make me think, but the point is that if I want to I can. I can. If I want to, I can, because he wants to listen, and he wants to help, and I want to tell him things, I want to tell him everything, I want him to know the most horrible parts of me so that he can help me change them into something I'm proud of. I want to be with him. I want him to stay with me. I want him to spend the rest of his life believing that I loved him from the first, so that he never has to feel as sick to his stomach as I do when I think of the fact that I didn't."

"You didn't do it on purpose," Roxas said. "You can't torture yourself over something you didn't mean to do."

"Yes, I can," Sora said. "But that has nothing to do with it. I want him. It's just that."

Roxas's arms were tight around his middle. He had rolled himself into a ball. "You're not always going to feel like this," he whispered into the blankets. "You're going to be happy again. You're not always going to be sad."

"I know," Sora said. "I know. But until I am, I want to take care of myself. Today I looked at him and I stopped breathing. I hate myself for what I did to him. But he makes me feel like my heart can pound with more than just fear. Let me please hold onto that."

Roxas didn't respond.

"I wanted him to look at me," Sora said, a half hour later, as he curled into Roxas's side and began to drift off. "That's all it was."

Roxas's reply was quiet, and Sora would only half remember it in the morning.

"I know that's why you hated him," Roxas said. "But I never understood how you didn't know that all he ever looked at was you."

* * *

The next day passed in a blur.

Sora would later try to remember exactly what happened that morning, or that afternoon, and would come up frustratingly blank. He went to class. He took notes. The next day he'd review them, pore over the messy, scattered handwriting and try to commit them to memory. The actual contents of the day, though, would forever remain a tad fuzzy. It was only when eight o'clock rolled round and Riku knocked on his door that Sora finally came back to the present.

The drive to the theatre was a quiet one. Sora sat in his seat and stared out the window. Riku sat in his seat and said very little. Sora felt oddly as if he were in a daze; he felt simultaneously distant and aware, of the heavy comfort of Riku's hand clutching his own, of Riku's voice in his ear as he told Sora to grab a seat. He felt for a moment as if he were having an out of body experience, but decided that since he couldn't afford to have one, he wasn't.

He took a seat in the last row, more out of habit than anything else. He'd always adored people-watching. He liked being able to imagine how other people spent their lives_. _The large, dark theatre was near empty, however. Probably because the movie had been playing for a while, probably because it was a school night. Riku sat beside him, placing a huge tub of popcorn between their seats. The previews began.

By the time the movie proper started, Sora had given up.

It wasn't that he was incapable of being distracted. It wasn't even that he was incapable of being able to sit near Riku without having his heart begin to palpitate. It was only that it had been a very long week. He always had difficulty being able to separate his thoughts from the present at the end of long weeks.

He closed his eyes, breath coming just a bit too fast, head rested on his bended knees. He turned his face away from Riku so that Riku wouldn't see that his eyes had closed, or that he was measuring the time it took to breathe in. His rib cage had gone funny; constricted like it had been every day of the last month, except it didn't hurt now. It felt heavy. Like someone was pushing down on his chest.

Unexpected and silent: _No one would know._

_You're in the back of the theater. The room is dark. Riku won't see what your face looks like. No one else would know._

Riku's hand drifted to the popcorn. Sora met it halfway.

He worked Riku's fingers open slowly. He reveled in how warm they were. He forcibly loosened his grip, because he thought that at first he'd probably grabbed on too tight.

"Sora," Riku said.

Sora took a deep breath, and drew the palm of Riku's hand to his lips.

He felt, more than heard, the catch in Riku's breath as he slid his lips slowly across Riku's open palm. Riku's eyes locked on his. His cheeks, neck looked redder than they had a few moments ago. Riku's eyes were widened, surprised, but his pupils were dilated and his mouth had opened slightly. A quick, wet tongue swept outwards to moisten Riku's lips. Sora followed the movement almost unconsciously.

"Sora," Riku said again.

_You're only burying yourself deeper in untruths._

Sora leaned over the large tub of popcorn and brushed his lips against Riku's.

He pulled back a centimeter a few moments later, staring into Riku's impossibly wide eyes. He waited for Riku to say something, or to tell him this wasn't fine. Riku didn't. He shifted forward again, pressing their mouths together more firmly, brushing his tongue against the seam of the taller boy's lips.

_I want_—

—_him._

As if that movement had broken a dam, Riku burst into motion. He groaned deep in his throat and grabbed at Sora's arms, hauling him out of his seat until Sora lay half-sprawled on top of him. Sora's mouth parted wider, half in desire and half in surprise, and Riku took full advantage of the opening, his tongue sweeping inside.

The tub of popcorn fell to the ground.

Sora moaned before he could stop himself, pushing his fingers through Riku's hair. He couldn't think; everything was turning into a hazy dream, weightless and weighted and it felt as if nothing existed except _Riku, _who flicked his tongue against Sora's own, wrapping around it and teasing it forwards until it drew out far enough for Riku to take between his lips and suck. Sora gasped, legs spreading unconsciously, then consciously, shifting until he had climbed out of his seat and into Riku's—

_Should have realized you had so much to lose._

—and Riku bucked upwards, gasping into Sora's mouth like he was the one who had suddenly forgotten how to breathe. He slid down in his seat, hands going tight around Sora's waist, hips shifting, grinding against Sora's own, the evidence of both their arousals rubbing against each other with every move. Sora muffled an involuntary noise against Riku's mouth, his short nails clawing at anything he could reach as he pushed downward, moving against the other boy in abrupt motions.

_So much to lose._

"Stop."

It took a few seconds for Sora to realize that Riku had been the one to break away and speak. He blinked blearily, confused for a moment, leaning back in to try to kiss him again before the word fully cemented in his head. Whatever expression he had on his face made Riku groan and lean back in, and for a few seconds the world was right and Riku's mouth was hard against his, but then Riku again pulled back.

"No," he said quietly. "We're not doing this here."

"Then where?" Sora said. He tightened his grip on Riku's shoulders, trying to shift as little as he could, except even the smallest motion kept sending sparks up his stomach and no matter how he tried he still couldn't catch his breath. "No one's watching. There's no one here."

"That doesn't matter," Riku said. "I don't want to do it here."

"Then let's go," Sora said, and his voice was getting marginally louder and less steady. "Please. Right now. We don't have to finish the movie, we don't have to do any of this, we can just…" Something in his voice went wrong. "Just..."

"Sora," Riku said, nudging the boy's neck with his nose. "You're crying."

Sora raised a hand to his eyes. When he withdrew them, they were damp.

"You can tell me what's wrong," Riku said.

Sora stared at the wetness on his hands. "I don't know."

"You do," Riku said.

"Riku," Sora said, and it was the truth, because there were fifty things that were wrong and he had no idea which one had apparently occurred to him now, "I don't."

Riku watched him quietly, hands still on Sora's hips, then lifting, slowly, up his arms, shoulders, to his cheeks. Once, Sora had been entirely unable to guess what the expression on his face meant. Now he knew, and mostly wished he didn't. No one liked being seen through.

"Do you want to go," Riku asked.

Sora's heart thudded dully against his ribcage. "Yes."

Riku slid the heel of his palm up to Sora's temple. "Do you want to go home?"

Sora shook his head. "Yes."

"When we get home," Riku said, "do you want to be alone."

Sora closed his eyes, and said, "no."

Riku stopped in the restroom before they went back to the car. He didn't say why, and Sora tried not to assume. It was harder than it should have been, sitting with his head in his hands in the middle of a movie theater and trying not to think about whether Riku was masturbating in the restroom because otherwise it would be difficult to drive the pair of them home. More difficult not to think about how a large part of him wanted Riku to.

Maybe Sora didn't deserve him.

It wasn't a new thought. It was only that it hadn't been relevant, before Sora had realized he'd wanted him.

Riku walked out of the restroom a few minutes later, wearing the sort of blank, distant expression that Sora only ever saw on him when Riku was trying very hard to hide something. Sora ducked his head down. Thought about grabbing Riku's hand. Thought about how easy it would be to pull him back inside. He slid his arms around his stomach instead and stood.

They walked back to the car mostly in silence. Sora kept his arms wrapped around himself. Riku kept his hands in his pockets. There were perhaps six inches between them; Sora felt every one of them like a blow.

He stood quietly as Riku unlocked the car and climbed in. He sat quietly as Riku double-checked to make sure he had his wallet, his keys. And then, quietly, he leaned across the seats and kissed him. Riku kissed back.

It wasn't like it had been inside the theater. He'd felt moderately ill inside the theater. He'd wanted nothing more than to stop thinking; he'd wanted so badly for Riku to do that for him. This was different. This felt clearer. He felt more fully as if he belonged inside his body.

He kissed him slowly, deliberately, tugging Riku's lips between his teeth and sucking at them. His hands crept up to Riku's shoulders, his cheeks. He leaned back when Riku half-crawled over the gearshift to loom over him, drawing up his knees to rest them around Riku's hips, and then he kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, until their lungs finally failed them and they couldn't do more than exhale against each other's lips.

He didn't know what to feel. That was the truth. He'd long since been unable to differentiate between guilt, or anxiety, or desire, or just sadness so heavy it weighed down on him like iron. All of those emotions had become intertwined within him. Sometimes, when he felt most low, he was scared that they always would be. But right now this was enough.

_Stay with me,_ he thought._ Don't hate me for what I did to you._

"I wasn't lying in the cinema," he whispered. "When we get home, I don't need you to leave me alone."

"Yeah," Riku said, and his voice shook. "Me too."

The drive home wasn't quiet. Sora wasn't sure if this was because any silence would have quickly grown uncomfortable in the wake of what had happened in the cinema, or the car, but whatever the reason, they talked_**—**_about everything and nothing. School and friends and plans for the weekend. Sora listened to him. He wanted nothing more.

Riku pulled into the parking lot near Sora's dorm a half hour later. They walked inside, up the stairs to the third floor. "Roxas is probably at home," Sora said. "He won't bother you. You don't need to talk with him if you don't want."

"Yes, I do," Riku said. "He's your brother."

"That doesn't mean I expect you to get along with him," Sora said. "He won't always be kind. I'm not going to ask you to be with him if it bothers you."

"I know you're not," Riku said. "But you want me to. That's good enough for me."

Sora didn't want to respond to that. He unlocked his door and swung it open.

Roxas and Axel were both there, twisted in Roxas's bedsheets and embarrassingly naked.

They hadn't noticed Riku or Sora yet. Given the somewhat unsettling noises Roxas was making, the interesting mix of expletives and sweet nothings that Axel was snarling, and the way both of them were currently doing things to each other that Sora had only ever seen in movies, that was pretty obvious. Actually, he was pretty shocked one of them hadn't broken in half. Sora's mouth dropped open. Riku's did no such thing.

"Holy shit," Riku said, grabbing Sora's face and shielding his eyes. As Sora had now caught every member of his family in the act at least once, and as he wasn't sure he could take another second of seeing his _brother_ being pounded into the mattress, he was thankful.

Axel twisted quickly, grabbing the discarded bed sheet off the floor. Roxas yelped, his legs sliding off Axel's shoulders. "Y-you…" he said, his face a bizarre green shade that clashed rather rudely with his hair. "You're not supposed to be back for another hour!"

"We left early," Sora said, absently pressing Riku's palms harder into his eyeballs. "We were getting bored, and…" On second thought, he grabbed Riku's right wrist and peeled it off his face. "Do you even know him?"

"It's not what it looks like," Roxas said.

His bedmate gave a derisive snort. "Fuck that," Axel said, grinning. "It's _exactly_ what it looks like."

"I don't really care what it looks like?" Sora said. "I sleep here?"

"You sleep on the other side of the room," Axel said.

"That would probably be a better argument if your underwear weren't currently laying on his bed," Riku said.

"This wasn't premeditated," Roxas said.

"Technically it's Hayner's bed," Sora said. "Which does make me feel a little better about the situation, actually."

"You still spend the night there," Riku said. "How can be sure when he last washed those?"

"It was alternative medicine," Roxas said.

"Excuse you," Axel said. "I wash my underthings as often as a normal person. If anyone has a problem with laundry, it's_**—"**_

"It wasn't my fault!" Roxas said. "I had a cold!"

There was silence for a moment. And then Sora made a noise that almost sounded like a laugh, and took a step back.

"Well," he said. "We'll leave you to that, I guess."

Roxas blinked for a moment in what looked like confusion, then swore, wrapping the covers around him. "You're not sleeping in the commons."

"I'm not sleeping in that bed," Sora said.

"I'll make him disinfect it," Roxas swore. "He'll get you new sheets."

"No, I won't," Axel said. Roxas looked at him. "Yes, I will."

"Which I'm expecting," Sora said. "But I'm not sleeping in the commons." He took a breath. "If he lets me, I'll stay with Riku."

Roxas and Riku both froze. Sora looked at them. His heart clutched high in his throat.

"You don't need to," he said, looking at Riku. "There are other people I can stay with. I'm not going to get mad if you say no. But you're here. I thought I might as well ask."

"Yes," Riku said, before Sora could keep talking himself into a hole. "Of course."

Sora's insides went a little still. He looked at Roxas, who was staring at him with an expression Sora couldn't describe. He looked at Riku, who was looking at him with an expression Sora didn't want to describe. He didn't look at Axel, because five minutes ago he'd been porking Sora's brother and there were limits to his indulgence.

_I,_ he thought. _I._

"I'll see you tomorrow," Sora said. "Don't worry about anything. I'll send Kairi a message not to wake you up."

"Yeah," Roxas said, after a pause. "That would be great."

"Okay," Sora said. "Okay." He took another step back towards the door, something fluttering odd and giddy in his ears. "Tomorrow. Have fun."

And before Axel could retort with something filthy, Sora and Riku were out the door.

They turned to stare at each other. A split second later, they burst into incredulous laughter and stumbled down the hallway.

They were still laughing ten minutes later when they arrived at Riku's room. Riku pulled out his keys from his pocket, fumbling them into the lock with a little more force than it really required. The keys finally cooperated, sliding into the keyhole, and Sora pushed the door open, gasping for breath.

"I'm never going to get over this," he said. "They were in my room."

"To be fair," Riku said, "there are a limited number of places two people can have torrid sex in without being arrested for public indecency. One of them is their room."

"I'm not accepting that excuse," Sora said. "We signed a roommate agreement freshmen year. We're supposed to give fair warning if someone might come home to soiled sheets."

"Technically not your room," Riku said. "And definitely not your sheets."

Sora smiled at him. Something in Riku's face shifted. A small, distant, mostly unconscious part of Sora wondered whether he had given Riku an honest smile in the last four weeks. The thought came and went so quickly he could barely remember it. The emotion it left behind did dampen the grin slightly, though.

"He didn't tell me," he said, almost before he meant to.

Riku looked at him, pulling off his jacket, his shoes. "Not everyone likes to tell other people who they're going out with," he said. "Even if they're family."

"I know," Sora said. "But he would have, if right now I were more like me."

Riku paused halfway through undoing his laces. After a moment, he stood. "It's not your fault," he said. "I know I can't make you believe that. But it's the truth. You'll have the rest of your life to be there for him. You'll never be able to do that if right now you don't take care of you."

"I'm not more important to me than he is," Sora said quietly.

"That's fine," Riku said. "But ignoring yourself in favor of someone else won't help you. And until you help yourself, there's no way you'll be able to help him."

Sora would never be able to describe the feeling that came over him then.

It wasn't because of what Riku had said. Not really, not more than tangentially. Roxas and Kairi loved him. His friends loved him. They tried so hard to make sure that he was safe, that he was well, that he was happier than he'd been the day before, that every day he could feel a little better than he had the day before, and neither of them—Roxas and Kairi would tear themselves to shreds before they asked Sora to focus on them before he focused on himself. He'd done the same for them a hundred times. They loved each other. Sora knew that, no matter what, that would never change. But the truth was the truth, and the truth was that Sora had spent the last month buried in his own head, and his friends had their own friends, his friends had their own lives, but his job was, even at the expense of his own health, to be there for them. No matter what anyone said about self-care, Sora could not make himself, even for a second, stop believing that.

It was only that Riku had looked at him, with his green, green eyes watching him quietly, with endless understanding, as if there was no part of Sora, no matter how unsure of itself, that Riku did not want to see—it was only that Riku had looked at him, and Sora had known, deep within himself, that he could feel more than this.

His stomach flopped in the pit of his abdomen. But for the first time in a very long time, it didn't bring with it pain.

"Come on," Riku said, probably because Sora wasn't saying much of anything anymore. He walked to his dresser and grabbed a large t-shirt and pajama pants, tossing them to Sora. Sora shrugged out of his day clothes, realizing somewhat distantly that he hadn't needed to ask Riku to turn around, and pulled himself into the clothes he'd been offered. He was pulling up the pants when Riku spoke again.

"I won't ask you to share the bed," Riku said.

Sora paused a moment, then did up the waist tie. "I'm not gonna kick you out of your bed."

"But you're not going to share it," Riku said. He grabbed a pillow and laid it on the floor. "And I won't sleep there."

His whole body felt warm. He realized, with surprise that rolled inside him like incandescent joy, that he couldn't feel his heart pounding in fear or guilt or anxiety at all.

"Tough," he said, grabbing a second pillow from atop Riku's coverlet and placing it on the opposite side of the bed, and if he smiled it was only because he couldn't not. "If you're sleeping on the floor, then I will, too."

The bed was lofted, and placed in the middle of the room, far enough away from the walls that they both had room to settle down on either side of it. They both lay there, facing towards each other, silent for a few minutes. "I can see you under the bed," Riku said, curled onto his side. Sora pillowed his cheek on an arm, extending his hand under the bed. Riku followed suit almost immediately. His fingers were warm, and loose. Little flutters raced up and down Sora's spine.

"You don't have to hold it all night long," Riku said. "You can stop when your arm falls asleep."

"I will," Sora said, the way people said _I won't._

"I'll wake you up in the morning," Riku said. "I won't let you sleep through class."

"Please don't."

"Good night," Riku said. "I love you."

And Sora, heart weightless and soaring for the first time in months, said, "Me, too."

Riku's eyes shot open.

He didn't say anything for what seemed like an eternity. His face had frozen into its empty, default mask, the way it always did when Riku was met with something that took him entirely aback, but the corners of the facade were crumbling, his jaw was tightening, his pupils were widening, and one month ago Sora wouldn't have been able to see it but now he could see nothing else, and he knew that Riku had never expected this.

"What," Riku said.

And maybe that was what gave Sora the ability to say it. The fact that Riku loved him, had always loved him, had always believed that Sora was good. He smiled at him. He felt calm wash over him like waves.

"I love you," Sora said. "Sorry. I love you, too."

For a moment, Riku didn't move. And then the breath rushed out of him in a long, shuddering exhale, and he pulled Sora closer, lifting Sora's hand to his mouth and kissing all along it. "Oh God," he moaned. "Oh God. Oh my God."

Sora closed his eyes, nerve endings focused on the kisses fluttering over his palm, wrist, forearm. "I love you," he repeated, just as softly as before, the words flittering across the still air like so many butterflies. "I do."

"Sora," Riku said, pulling the boy under the bed until he ended up on the other side, in Riku's arms. "Sora. Sora. _Sora._"

Sora rested his face against Riku's shoulder and fell asleep.


	5. A Faintly Covered Truth

**Disclaimer: **still not mine; chapter title is from _Shout It Loud_, the opening from _King of Bandits Jing; _what is resolution?_  
_**Dedication: **To **The Writer You Fools.**_  
_

**Advanced Theory**

**Chapter Five: A Faintly Covered Truth**

* * *

It was warm.

Sora awoke, blinking blearily and trying to adjust to the lack of light. He could faintly make out the red numbers of the digital clock lying on the bedside table, just out of reach. Four minutes past six. He wondered why he'd awoken so early. Then he saw Riku, and remembered.

It was difficult to see Riku's face clearly in the darkness; it was still early enough in the year that the sun wouldn't begin to rise for another hour, and the only light came from a distant streetlamp streaming through the window, dim and not much use. But he could see that Riku's eyes were shut, and that there was no stress lining the contours of his face. His arm around Sora was loose, casual. His mouth was soft against Sora's neck.

The tension that had immediately sprung into his body upon realizing that someone else was in his bed seeped out.

Slowly, he raised himself onto an elbow, watching him with emotion like bubbles swirling around inside. _I said I loved him l__ast night,_ he thought, lifting a palm to his mouth to stifle the almost full-blow grin that threatened to take over his entire face. He dropped his head onto his crossed arms, nuzzling his face into Riku's hair, then drew back, muffling his laughter, and sneeze. The sound drew a murmur from Riku; his eyebrows knit momentarily before he turned, rolling until he lay half-sprawled atop Sora.

Sora choked on a laugh and drew one of his hands through the head of white hair now resting on his chest. Soft. He couldn't remember if he'd ever really touched it. He must have; he thought he could vaguely recall grabbing onto it during foreplay, or sex. But he'd never noticed how smooth it was. It fell so nicely between his fingers.

_I will never_ know, he thought,_ how __someone like him fell in love with me._

"Sora," Riku mumbled in his sleep. "I lo…"

"Shh," Sora whispered, smoothing Riku's hair out of his face. "It's still dark out. Go back to sleep."

Riku groaned and rolled more fully on top of him, sending the air rushing from Sora's lungs. He gasped and shifted, laughter bubbling through his smushed chest again. _Beautiful,_ he thought, then thought it again, _beautiful, beautiful,_ from the fluttering of Riku's eyelashes to the strength in his arms to the way his overly large shirt was beginning to slide off one shoulder to reveal a delineated clavicle and corded muscles—

He was beautiful. Sora was going to tell him the truth.

It wasn't a thought that came with the trappings of sudden decisions, exactly. It didn't hit him with the force of epiphany, or fear, it didn't sink into him suddenly the way all the worst thoughts did. It came like knowledge; like truth that had always been buried deep in his soul.

It came back to Riku. Everything came back to Riku. The pain he felt now. The pain he'd felt then. The thought that had been born in him months ago, when he'd stood outside in the middle of the snow, and he'd wished someone Merry Christmas, and Riku had turned from him, and an emotion that felt an awful lot like bitterness had begun poisoning his heart. There was sickness in that. There was a great deal of unhealth. But Sora could fix that. He would.

He'd lied. No matter what Roxas or Kairi said, that was the truth. None of this would have happened if he hadn't been angry, it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been cruel. Things probably would have been easier. Almost certainly, they would have been worse. But the truth was the truth, and the truth was that he would not keep something like this from Riku.

He would tell him. Riku would forgive him, or he wouldn't. If he didn't, Riku would still be happy. Sora would do everything to make sure.

Sora would tell him. Of course he would.

"Sora?" Riku said.

His voice was sleepy. Through the veil of dark Sora could make out the flutter of Riku's eyelashes, more closed than not. "Whassamatter?" Riku said, half a yawn. "Why're we on the floor?"

Sora smiled, honest and bright, chest filling with a fuzzy sort of warmth that was so much like peace he wanted to laugh aloud. "Because you didn't think I wanted to share the bed," Sora said. "Come on. Up."

Riku moaned irritably but clambered to his feet, dragging Sora with him and dropping him unceremoniously onto the mattress. He automatically scooted closer, tugging Sora to his chest. Sora sighed, eyes closing in delight. Peace, he thought again. Of course it was peace. How much easier would everything have been if he'd realized a month ago that he could tell the truth? Less than he'd wish, probably; that sort of serenity had only come when Sora had finally come to the conclusion that he loved him. But his heart had stopped pounding. He felt as if there was nothing he couldn't do.

_Let him forgive me. I don't want him to go._

He'd felt Riku almost fall asleep behind him when, very abruptly, Riku froze.

For a split second, Sora wondered whether Riku had seen inside his thoughts. And then Riku said, "I love you," quietly, the way people said prayers, and the irrational terror that accompanied the thought disappeared.

He turned in Riku's arms, hands coming up to squirm around his waist like an anchor. His pulse had begun to thrum again in his chest, his wrists, but there was no stress accompanying it; there was only a feeling of pure, weightless glee, of _if nothing else I will always have this._ "Yeah," he said. "I love you, too."

There was a sudden exhalation, and then Riku pulled him closer, his mouth seeking Sora's own and finding it, pressing down in an almost frightening jumble of relief and desperation and sweet, sincere _love._ He rolled them over until Riku was holding himself above him, laving at Sora's lips. Sora moaned softly, shifting his legs apart unconsciously so that Riku could lay between them. Riku groaned deep in his throat and immediately shifted, his hands working themselves under Sora's borrowed shirt and sliding, massaging the slight muscles until Sora was writhing underneath him in delight.

"Love you," Riku whispered, leaving Sora's lips to plant kisses over his cheeks, forehead, neck. "Thank you."

Sora slid his hands in Riku's hair. The lips on his neck gentled, until nothing remained but the soft, barely-there brush of eyelashes, and Sora pulled Riku up until they were at face level, then leaned forward, nuzzling Riku's mouth. "I love you, too."

It was only a few minutes later that they again fell asleep.

* * *

The next time Sora awoke, the sun was filtering through the blinds and onto his face. He squinted his eyes shut, burrowing deeper into his soft, make-shift pillow. In his stupor, it took a few seconds before he realized why he'd awakened. And then his eyes shot open.

His cell was ringing, and he was pretty sure who was calling.

He frowned. He'd left his phone on the floor the night before, and it would take a huge amount of effort to climb out of bed and grab it. On the other hand, it'd take even more effort to pacify the caller if he _didn't. _He sighed in the manner of one who has been unfairly put upon and reached over Riku's body to try and grab his cell. The key word here being _try_, because as he stretched out his hand to reach for the phone, Riku batted his arm away and crushed him to his chest.

"Tell the phone to shut up and go back to sleep," Riku said, almost petulant. "It's barely 8."

Sora considered this, then sadly decided against it. "Sorry. But you know who's calling."

"Don't care. We have leverage. We caught him in bed last night. He can't make you do anything."

The phone stopped ringing. Sora and Riku both shifted to watch it with bated breath. A split second later, it began again. Sora groaned, half-heartedly trying to grab at it. Riku rolled and dropped his weight entirely atop him, pinning Sora to the bed so totally that he basically pushed the laugh out of Sora's gut. "Give me the phone!" Sora said through his helpless laughs, pushing at Riku's shoulders. "He'll kill me."

"I'll kill _him_," Riku said groggily, collapsing fully onto Sora's chest. "It's Friday. First class isn't until 11. We've got three hours_._" He pushed their hips together to punctuate, apparently on the off chance that his point wasn't entirely clear. Sora's giggle turned into a gasp. "He's gotta give up sooner or later," Riku said.

"If I don't answer," Sora said, barely managing to keep his voice from coming out a whimper, "he's gonna come over."

"So?" Riku mumbled, laving at the pale expanse of Sora's throat. "He made _us_ watch."

Sora moaned, mostly in the irritation that came with knowing that you had someone waiting for you in bed and someone waiting for you on the phone and for whatever reason you were inevitably going to choose the less attractive option. He said a forlorn goodbye to the prospect of spending an entire morning in bed, and sighed. "Off."

Riku released one final groan of discontent and rolled off, his handsome features pulled into something scarily reminiscent of a pout. "If you answer the phone," he grumbled, "I vote we make up for the hour of time he will definitely spend yelling at you by spending the entire day in bed."

Sora bopped him upside the head, but he couldn't fight the somewhat soppy grin that washed over his face. "Yeah," he said, a little breathy. "Okay."

Riku smiled at him. The expression looked tired and happy and brighter than anything Sora had ever seen.

He couldn't remember having seen Riku smile much in the last month. There existed, he told himself, with the quiet conviction of a lie, a great many reasons about why that might be.

Sora leaned over him, pawing at the cell phone twice before he managed to grab hold of it. He flipped it open with a sigh.

"Where," Roxas shouted; Sora held the phone away from his ear— "the hell have you been?"

"Sorry," Sora said. He rolled onto his stomach. Riku's hands began wandering along the hem of his shirt. "I just woke up."

"That's not an answer!"

"Yeah it is," Sora said. "I told you where I was going last night."

"And now it's eight in the morning," Roxas said. "Do you see how perhaps your inability to answer a phone might make me feel concerned?"

Sora sighed, but his mouth was spread wide and he felt flushed all over, strange and weightless. "Not really," he said, smile audible in his voice. "But you're you."

Roxas fell silent for a few moments, the only sound coming over the receiver of the telephone his slight, mostly inaudible breathing.

"You don't sound unwell," he said finally.

Sora closed his eyes, burrowing his head under a pillow. "I'm not."

Another silence met this one. This one was longer, and more thoughtful. Then Roxas said, "I'm glad."

Sora curled in slightly.

His brother was going out with someone. Sora didn't know if Roxas loved him or not. He didn't know if Roxas trusted him or not. He could guess; Roxas had always been a little more reclusive, had always been more reluctant to give even the smallest part of himself to someone he didn't believe would be worth it. But the fact remained that last night Roxas lay in bed with someone Sora didn't know, and Sora—

He wanted to change that. He didn't ever want to feel so bad that he forgot to keep track of his friends again.

"I'm gonna make it up to you," he said, because Roxas would know what he was talking about. "I'm not going to let you do everything alone again."

"Not going to hold it against you," Roxas said. "It wasn't your fault."

"I love you."

"Sora," Roxas said, and he laughed, bright and happy and good. "I know."

Sora smiled. Behind him, Riku slid a finger along his spine. He felt warm. Everything felt warm.

"Well," he said, clearing his throat and rolling over onto his back. "We're awake now. Do you wanna go to breakfast?"

There was a small pause, and then Roxas coughed. "Err. No, actually. I think…I'm gonna skip breakfast today."

Sora had just opened his mouth to ask why, when a new, slightly nasal voice called out on the other end of the phone. Something about not being fit to walk, and spending the entire day in bed. There was the sound of a small scuffle, and then Roxas again coughed. "Sorry. It's nothing. I just thought I'd better stay home today, class included. Because I'm…sick."

Sora snorted. "Of course. You have a cold."

He could all but _hear_ the flush in Roxas's voice when he stammered a goodbye and hung up. Sora grinned and tossed his phone back onto the floor.

"No breakfast today," he said, by way of explanation. Riku's face brightened, and Sora's grin widened. "But we should probably still go to class. I need to make Roxas's excuses."

"I'm not going to comment on that."

"Please don't. That's my brother."

Roxas rolled his eyes at him, and draped back atop Sora's chest. "So," he said, voice laughing and low. "We _do_ have the next three hours to ourselves, right?"

Sora shivered, and briefly debated whether he should just ignore how tired he was in favor of sex. With a reluctant sigh, he said, "And we're gonna spend those three hours sleeping."

Riku didn't argue, but his smirk shifted into something odd and a little faraway. Sora frowned, his eyebrows drawing together. "What?"

"It's nothing," Riku said. "It's just a little difficult to believe that you're here."

Sora's mouth closed.

"A month ago I wouldn't have thought about this," Riku said, quiet and matter of fact. "A month ago, this was still a little like a dream. I'd think about it. Every night I'd let myself wonder what this would be like. What I'd do if you were with me. If your hair was as soft as it looked. What you'd feel like…" He lowered his face again, this time running his tongue against the seam of Sora's lips. Sora opened them without a second thought. Riku slipped his tongue inside for a moment, slow and warm, and then pulled away. "What you'd taste like. But dreams are only dreams. They weren't important. Why would they be? I knew you would never feel the same."

Sora watched him quietly. "But here I am."

"Yeah," Riku said. "Here you are." He swept a thumb over Sora's slightly swollen lips. "You're brave."

Sora looked up at him, eyes veiled. "I'm not."

"As far as you knew, I hated you," Riku said. "You had no reason to believe otherwise. I never treated you very well."

Sora couldn't think of a response to that statement that wasn't a little too honest.

"I was scared," Riku said, honest and flat. "You hated me. I acted like I didn't care about you. Your brother had already seen through me. I wasn't going to do anything that would let you, too. I was fine like that. I would have gone through life hiding what I felt for you. That's the truth. I wanted you. Sometimes I thought I probably needed you. But I never would have said a word. You confessed to me. You're the one who might have gotten hurt. Of course you're brave. Of the two of us, your risk was worse."

Riku's eyes had closed as he was talking, and his voice had begun to go slow and sleepy, and so he wasn't looking at Sora's face as he spoke_._ There was mercy in that. Sora didn't think he would have been able to explain away the dull horror that swept over him when Riku said the word _worse._

Sora opened his mouth and said, "Riku."

But Riku had already drifted back to sleep, and Sora didn't think he was brave enough to wake him up for that.

He fell into a light doze somewhere around hour two, the kind where you knew you were dreaming but were too exhausted to force yourself out of sleep. He awoke an hour later to the feel of fingers playing lightly with his own, half-sure it was only a continuation of the dream until he lifted those fingers to his mouth and realized he could taste them on his tongue. Riku leaned over him, his long hair falling into Sora's face. Sora turned his face into the curtain of it and pulled Riku down, pursing a kiss against Riku's mouth.

"Morning," Riku said, when he finally pulled away. "We've got fifteen minutes to get to class."

Sora blinked at him for a minute, still stuck in that warm, fuzzy place where Riku was kissing him. Then a lot of emotions came crashing down on him. He chose the one that wouldn't make him late for Lit. "Asshole."

"You could have set an alarm," Riku said, a little too logically. "Also, I was hoping you'd oversleep and we wouldn't have to get up." He slid off the bed, dodging the half-hearted swat Sora aimed at his shoulder, and grabbed a t-shirt from his closet. "You can borrow clothes if you want. I still have a few things from high school that shouldn't be too big on you. Red?"

"Doesn't matter," Sora said. "Nothing with buttons."

"Too dressy?"

"Too tired for fine motor skills," Sora said. "Give me a minute in the bathroom. I can't fall asleep."

He waited until Riku waved a hand at the restroom before disappearing inside it. He stumbled more than walked towards the sink, fumbling it open and sticking as much of his head as he cut fit under the spray. The water was cold enough to shock the remainder of the drowsiness out of his system. He carefully made eye contact with the reflection of his face.

"I left my textbooks at home," he said, calling over the rushing water. "Can I share yours?"

"Roxas isn't coming to class today," Riku said. "So I'm sitting next to you anyway."

"Yeah," Sora said, watching himself in the mirror and thinking _I'm not brave, I've never been brave._ "Yeah."

They left the room five minutes later, tripping over backpacks and untied shoelaces all the way across campus. The classroom was still mostly empty by the time they both stumbled inside, three minutes to spare. Zexion glanced up at them, eyes lingering on their clasped hands. Sora decided that wasn't a conversation he really wanted to have right now and only said, "Roxas is sick. If you have handouts today, I'll need two sets of notes."

Zexion nodded slowly, but let his eyes linger on the way Sora had yet to release Riku's palm. He turned to Riku. "Riku," he said calmly. "I'd like to speak to you."

Riku, to his credit, apparently knew enough about how things worked in Sora's somewhat co-dependent extended family to know it wouldn't do him well to argue now. The door closed behind him. Sora leaned in, pressing his ear against the door. A few minutes later, Sora came to the conclusion that Zexion had probably sound-proofed his walls in a desperate bid to have as much between-classes sex as he could, and was thus not going to hear anything.

When the door opened, Riku's face looked mildly ashen. Sora had to wait through all of class before he managed to ask him what they'd talked about.

"You watch horror movies?" Riku asked. When Sora shook his head, Riku only said, "Good. It'll save you from having to visualize."

Sora shrugged. "Could be worse," he said. "Could have been Demyx."

"Yeah," Riku said. "I guess this is a bad time to say that I've been conned into meeting the family at your place this weekend."

Sora slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked out the classroom. "I have no advice for you," he said. "There is absolutely nothing I can say that'll make it easier."

Riku shoved him with a companionable shoulder and then walked ahead, which saved Sora from having to explain why his smile had faltered a little when Riku mentioned the weekend. "You eat with Kairi and the rest."

Sora shifted his shoulders, jogging a bit to catch up. "We don't have to."

"Wasn't what I asked."

"You didn't really ask," Sora said. "You mostly just stated."

"I want to eat with your friends," Riku said, turning to face him directly, eyes steady and honest. "She was nice. I liked her. It always upset me a little that I never knew how to act around her because she was so close to you."

Sora pressed his hands into his pockets. He thought about Kairi. "Yeah," he said. Then, "Okay. I'd like that." Then, "Don't you dare antagonize Hayner. Again. If you throw so much as a _peanut_ in his direction—"

"You'll never kiss me again," Riku said. "Don't worry. I can bear with the idiot for a half hour."_  
_

"That," Sora said. "That's what I'm talking about."

Because life worked like that, that was the instant Hayner asked, "Who's an idiot?"

Sora's friends were congregated around the entrance of the dining hall, waiting for him. Kairi stood there, Wakka, Tidus, Pence, Olette. Selphie and Hayner were a little further back. Neither of them were quite looking at Sora. He hadn't apologized to them yet. He hoped that was why.

"Hey," Sora said, before Riku could come up with a knee-jerk response. "Riku's going to be eating with us, if that's okay."

Selphie looked a little subdued. Hayner's expression went sideways for a minute. He glanced at Sora, then glanced away.

"Of course," Kairi said instead. "We're happy to have you."

And, because Kairi had always been the one who knew what's up, it was as simple as that. The rest of them swallowed Sora up the way they always did, talking about classes, about friends, about psychology or lit or who'd been having the worse month. Pence and Olette slipped next to Riku like they knew how badly Sora wanted them to. They grabbed their lunch happily. They found seats near the back.

Sora was just about to join them when Kairi slid a hand around Sora's arm and pulled him silently back.

She led him out of the dining hall, up the stairs to the mostly vacant second floor. It was quieter up here, the sounds of the dining hall still audible, but muted and faraway. If he listened carefully, he thought he could hear Hayner shouting something.

"What is it?" he asked.

Kairi studied him carefully a moment. "You look good," she finally said.

Sora paused, rubbing a hand over his forearm. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that two days ago you looked so worn that I was scared for you," she said, voice steady and exact. "And now you look almost at peace. You look good."

Sora didn't know if he could respond to that. He opened his mouth to try; nothing came out for a few seconds. He ducked his head and nodded in lieu of the answer he wanted to give, then said, "Yeah," and then, "It's," and then the rest of the words finally came bubbling out of him. "You helped. My brother helped. I thought about a lot of stuff. I came to terms with a lot of stuff. And Riku was there. All of that helped."

Kairi's hands were folded in her lap. She looked at him quietly, eyes roaming over his face, his hands.

"I don't know what's in your head," she said.

Sora said nothing. Kairi continued.

"I don't know what's in your head," she said again. "I can guess. I've known you for years; the way that you sometimes know me better than I do, I sometimes know you better than you. But from the very beginning, the way you dealt with Riku was different than you normally would. I've never seen anyone get to you like he did. I've never seen anyone be able to make you go so upset. And that wasn't healthy, Sora. It wasn't good, that someone could turn you that inside out, it wasn't good that you could fixate so completely on someone that you could start fraying just because they wouldn't look at you, it wasn't healthy, I don't even know if it's healthy now." Her hand came up to his bangs. She pushed them gently out of his eyes. "But you look happier. You look a little more free."

Sora looked down. Her fingers shifted to his cheek, and she tipped it softly up. "Do you love him?"

He didn't answer immediately. Distantly, he could still hear students in the dining hall, students on the green lawns outside and below. He couldn't hear (what he thought was) Hayner's voice anymore; maybe he'd settled down, maybe it had never been him at all. Somewhere below him, Riku was sitting alone with a group of people he'd never gotten along with and had barely ever spoken to. He'd asked to do it. He'd wanted to be friends.

"I do," he said. "From the bottom of my heart I do."

Her arms were around him before he'd finished speaking. He laughed, the sound more hoarse than he'd thought it would emerge. "Don't cry," he said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "You know I start bawling every time you cry."

"But you're happy," Kairi said. "No one in the world deserves that as much as you do. Of course I'll cry. I've had to watch you sad for the last month."

They held each other there for a while. For the length of time it took Kairi to stop crying. For the length of time it took Sora to stop as well. He wiped his palm over his eyes, let her wipe hers on the shoulder of his borrowed shirt. It was the work of a few minutes before they both managed to compose themselves. They stood there, hands held lightly between them.

"Are you going to tell him?" she asked finally.

Sora didn't need to ask what she was talking about. He halfway wished he did. "Today, I think."

Kairi leaned back against the wall. Her eyes were distant and focused on something faraway. "I wouldn't judge you if you didn't," she said. "I'd probably think it would be the kinder solution. For him and for you."

Sora dipped his head. "Yeah. Maybe. I'm still going to."

"For self-satisfaction?"

"No," Sora said. "It's only that I know myself, and I know I'm not strong enough to keep something like that a secret for long, even if I was only doing it to protect his feelings. That means that I only have one choice, and that's telling him that all it was was a lie."

"A lie."

Except Kairi hadn't been the one to speak.

Sora and Kairi both turned.

Riku stood there. His face was the same blank mask that he wore so much, and his hands were loosely clasped at his sides. His lips looked a little paler than they normally did. His fingers looked like they'd begun to shake.

"I was looking for you," he said. "You were both gone for a long time. I wanted to make sure you actually ate something before we went—" his mouth clacked shut. He looked like he was trying very hard to not jump to conclusions. He looked like he was trying very hard not to let his voice crack. "I'm sorry. I don't understand what you meant when you said _lie._"

Beside him, Kairi had gone unearthly still. Sora's face, though, felt as if it had gone white.

It was all right, he told himself. He'd always intended to tell Riku. He'd been going to do it sooner rather than later. He'd been going to do it today. The only difference was that Sora had wanted to preface it with making sure Riku knew how much he loved him. He'd wanted so badly to make sure Riku knew from the beginning that all the anger he'd felt was in the past.

It was all right. Everything was going to be fine.

"Kairi," Sora said, his voice unsteady. "Go back to the others. I need to talk with Riku."

"Sora," she said.

"Oh," Sora said, and his heart did something unpleasant, felt like it seized. "Please."

Kairi left without a word.

The second floor was generally quiet; it was close enough to the dining hall that voices and shouts streamed upstairs, but people didn't come up much. There were no offices on the second story, no couches, only one pair of restrooms near-constantly out of order and ill-tended. Sun streamed through tall, narrow windows, but there were too few of them, and most of the second floor was always a little too dark. Riku stood before him in that darkness. Sora couldn't read his expression at all.

Riku looked at him. His eyes never left.

"I would like to know what's going on," Riku said.

Sora closed his eyes, for a second unable to look at Riku at all. He took a breath. "I was going to tell you tonight," he said, voice barely discernible over the low hum of the students milling around on the lower floor. "After yesterday, I wanted to tell you the truth."

"Tell me what," Riku said. His voice was even. There was no hysteria to the sounds. But something about the way that his eyes were locked on him looked strange, and horrible, and desperate, so desperate, like they were locked the way his jaw was locked, and Sora realized that he was the one who'd made Riku's face look like that and wanted to scream. "What, exactly, was a lie."

"Everything about the beginning," Sora said, so he wouldn't be able to stop himself. "That's all."

The mask that Riku had been holding up fell entirely from his face.

"What," he whispered.

"The beginning," Sora said. "The first day I came to you. The first—the first, what happened at first. I didn't like you. I didn't...know."

Riku went completely still.

He didn't crack. His eyes didn't grow wet. That would have been kinder, perhaps; Sora could have run up to him, hugged him, made him see that the past was the past. But it wasn't that at all. Riku didn't look like he was breaking. He looked like he was turning to stone.

"You said you loved me," he said. "That was a lie."

"No," Sora said, taking a stumbling step forward. "No."

"That's what you just said," Riku said. "You told her it was a lie."

"_No,_" Sora cried. He took another step, and another, reaching out to grab at Riku's white-knuckled fists. "I do, I do_. _Please, I wouldn't lie about that. Maybe I didn't, I didn't know, but now I do, I _do—_"

"You don't," Riku said. "Don't lie just because you don't know how to say it in front of me."

"_Listen_ to me," Sora said, fingers going tight around Riku's wrists. "Please, please_—_"

"I've been listening to you for the past month, Sora," Riku said. "I've been listening to you and loving you and worshipping you. And now I'm listening to you tell me you want to end it."

Sora jerked back as if slapped.

For a minute, he wasn't sure he'd understood correctly. It made very little sense. Riku loved him. Riku had always loved him. It couldn't be, that something like this could destroy that. _You told yourself you'd accept it,_ he thought, _you told yourself that you would deserve it if he said no,_ but now it was happening and the only think he could think was _no, no, __he has to listen, I'm not that unselfish, I'm not like him, he can't start hating me, I can't let him go.__  
_

"No," he said. "No. That's not what I want."

"There aren't that many ways of interpreting what you just said."

"No," Sora said again. "Riku, please, please_._" He gasped for breath, a hand coming up to his mouth to try and muffle the sound that just emerged from him then, another shooting out to splay against the wall because his knees were trembling and if he didn't catch himself he'd sink. "Riku, no. Don't hate me. Please don't l_—_"

Riku grabbed Sora's cheeks. "Don't," he said, and there was no composure left in him, there was no cold, hard stone left in him, he finally sounded the way Sora felt, and Sora clung onto him as Riku made noises deep in his throat and pressed kisses to his eyelids. "Don't cry, please don't cry. I don't hate you. I could never hate you. Even if you lied, even if you don't love me, I could _never__—_"

"I love you."

"Don't lie to me," Riku said. "It's okay if you don't love me. I told you before that I would love you even if you didn't feel the same. I don't…I don't need you to love me. Just…please. Please don't lie to me."

Sora bowed his head so low his chin brushed his chest. He brought his hands up to his eyes. "I'm not lying," he whispered. "I love you." Then again, shoulders jerking forward with the force of the sobs he was trying to suppress. "I love you. And you don't have to do anything. You don't have to speak to me. You don't have to love me back. You don't…" he gasped for breath. "You don't have to do a thing. Just don't make me stop. Just please let me love you."

Riku shook his head, expression lost and breath coming uneven. "Sora," he said. "You don't mean that."

"I do," Sora said. "I do." He took a step forward, bending until his head lay butted against Riku's chest. "Listen to me. I love you. Please let me explain."

The world around him was quiet. Riku's hands were cold on Sora's cheeks.

"I used to hate you," Sora said. "Everything about you. That's the truth. You know it's the truth, I hated you, I hated you with everything I was. You were distant, you were cruel, you acted like you didn't care about anybody, and I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't handle it. You were beautiful," Sora said, choking. "You were so smart, you were so clever, and you wouldn't look at me. You wouldn't look at anyone. You wouldn't look at me. And I hated you, I hated you, I hated you so much it hurt."

"Sora," Riku said.

Sora shook his head. "That's the reason," he said. "It's the reason this all started. Kairi told you about Marlene. You wouldn't treat her kindly. You wouldn't so much as look at us. And all I could think was that maybe if I could knock you off kilter I could prove once and for all that you were human, and then it wouldn't matter so much that you didn't care about me. So I lied." Quiet. His legs had forgotten how to move. "I didn't think. I didn't know what else to do."

Riku's hands dropped to his sides. Sora thought about grabbing them, pulling them back up to his cheeks. He wanted to. He wanted to so badly a small part of himself almost didn't care that Riku didn't want to touch him anymore. _Be still. Please be still._

"You hated me then," Riku said.

Sora shoved his fingers against his mouth. "Yes."

"Oh," Riku said. "I knew you must have told me to stop."

Sora's head shot up.

"No," he said, stumbling over the word the way he stumbled forward. "No, I didn't."

"You did," Riku said. He'd taken a step back. There was something very wrong with the expression on his face. "I knew you must have. Right after we finished, you told me to always stop. People don't say that just for the hell of it. It's supposed to be common sense. It's supposed to be understood. There is no reason you would have asked that, if you hadn't already done so, and I hadn't stopped."

"But I didn't," Sora said. He reached for Riku's arms, wrung them together when Riku took another step away. "I told you that you could do it. I wanted you to do it. I only said that after because I felt scared of myself. I was confused, I didn't know what I wanted___—_"

"You hated me," Riku said, and his voice was a shout now. "You hated me. You hated me, and I took you home, and I kissed you, and kissed you, and I kept kissing you, and you hated me and I took you to bed."

"Riku!" Sora screamed. "_Stop!_"

Riku stopped. Of course he did. He'd said he would.

"You didn't hurt me," Sora said, choked and so full of despair. "You asked to kiss me and I said yes, you asked to have sex with me and I said yes, I said yes, yes, I had no idea why I said yes. But I wanted you. I wanted you to kiss me. I wanted you to touch me. I hated you so much I was sick with it, but the moment you kissed me the only thing I wanted was for you to do more. You didn't hurt me. You did everything I wanted you to do."

Sora's eyes had closed. He twisted his fingers into his shirt.

"Everything that's happened since then has pulled me apart," he said. "Because I was angry with you, because I lied. Because I hated myself. Because I wanted you. So badly I didn't know what to do, I wanted you. I didn't know how to deal with that, I had no idea how to live inside my own head. For the last month I've spent every day feeling as if I was going to crawl out of myself, and I didn't know how to live with that. I didn't know who to go to for help. But you loved me. From the beginning, from the _beginning_ you loved me, you were good, you were kind. And that's not what made it better. I barely know what made it better. But you were the only thing I had that could make me feel human again, and sometimes I think that was twisted, because you were also part of the reason I hated myself so much, what I did to you was part of the reason I hated myself so much, but that didn't matter. You loved me. You helped me. Of course I fell in love with you. you're Riku; what else was I supposed to do?"

And that was the truth of it. Nothing else was left but this.

"What I told you last night wasn't a lie," he said, words falling out of him like exhausted despair. "I love you. More than anything_._ I don't want to end this. I don't want you to leave me. But if you do…if you can't forgive me, then at least give me this. Give me a few minutes, so that I can pretend that maybe today is still yesterday and we're falling asleep on the floor, and I've just told you that I loved you and you're laughing and hugging me, and everything is perfect_._ Please. Let me pretend."

There was silence. For so long that the voices downstairs began to dull into a low murmur as people finished their food and left, silence. Sora stood there, motionless, hands pressed against the lump in his throat.

"Sora," Riku said.

Sora kept his eyes closed.

"Sora," Riku repeated. "Look at me."

Sora did, because he had no right to say no. And then Riku closed the distance between them, and took Sora's shoulders within his big, warm hands, and kissed him.

"You're such an idiot," Riku said, when he pulled away, voice wet and eyes wet and Sora couldn't understand the words coming out of his mouth. "You're such an idiot, I'm such an idiot. It wasn't your fault. None of it has ever been your fault."

"It was," Sora said, gaping at him, trembling so hard with fear and shame and the heady pleasure that came from being in Riku's arms. "I lied to you. I wanted to make you feel low."

"I drove you to it," Riku said. "You wouldn't have done it, if it hadn't been for me."

"That's not an excuse."

"But it's okay," Riku said. "I would tell you how little I care, but that wouldn't help you. I would tell you how much I deserved it, but you'd just argue. So listen to me when I tell you this: I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm sorry I made you hate me. I'm sorry I saw how bad you felt and didn't realize I was contributing. I'm sorry I made you think for a second that I would ever stop loving you. I'm sorry, the way you're sorry. But everything that happened this month led me to you. It's okay. I love you. I forgive you. I love you. It's okay."

Sora swayed on his feet. He leaned forward, most of his weight falling atop Riku's chest. His knees shook so hard he thought they'd fail him. His thoughts had gone tumultuous and white.

"You…" he began, then licked his lips. His mouth was strangely parched, but there was something rising up in his chest that he couldn't define. He wanted to apologize again, but he couldn't find the words to ask. "You love me."

"Sora," Riku said. "Was that ever in doubt?"

His legs gave out a little bit. He raised a trembling hand and patted Riku on the head lightly. "You've_—_you've got to stop acting like such a sap, Riku," he said, voice wobbling. "People are gonna start thinking that you have a heart."

Riku laughed then, and the sound that rang through the empty room was as warm as the first rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds after a long, hard rain. "Obviously," he said. "It's yours."

Something that felt an awful lot like joy exploded in his chest.

Things weren't perfect. Things were probably never going to be perfect. Riku had been right when he said that brushing off what had happened a month ago would not help; there was still guilt in Sora's stomach. It would probably take a long while for him to wholly forgive himself. But his family loved him. His friends loved him. Riku_—__Riku_ loved him. Riku wanted to be with him. It was going to be okay.

Sora smiled. He threw his arms around Riku's shoulders.

"Sap," Sora said again, the way people said _my one true love_. "Sap, sap, sap."_  
_

"Maybe," Riku grinned, holding a hand out for Sora to take. "But I'm your sap. I love you. And I'll never have it any other way."

Sora laughed, the sound exploding out of him like surprise. He echoed the sentiment. And then, for good measure, he repeated the words, all the way home.

* * *

Years later, Sora woke up at four minutes past six in the morning and sat up, blinking blearily at the man laying beside him.

"Riku," he muttered, shaking him awake. "Wake up. We promised Selphie and Tidus we'd pick them up at the airport."

His long-time lover moaned and pulled the covers over his head. "Don't care," he groaned. "I don't see why we should have to wake up at the crack of dawn to pick them up. It's not _their_ anniversary. "

"Shut up," Sora said, grinning. "They came all the way from Destiny Islands to see us. Hell, _everyone's_ coming to see us. It's the least you can do."

"The _least I can do,_" Riku groaned, rolling over until he was sprawled atop his younger bed mate, "is go back to sleep. The second least I can do is keep you here all day long, like I was going to before everyone in existence decided to crash a private party. We can pick them up later. Like, tomorrow, or something."

"Riku," Sora laughed, pushing him off. "_Up._"

There was a small pause, and then Riku groaned, rolling off the bed and onto the floor. "You're such a jerk," he muttered. "I don't know why I put up with you."

Sora crawled over the bed, smiling down at Riku, still sprawled on the carpeted floor. He bent down to press their lips softly together. "Because you love me," he whispered.

Riku sighed in amusement and stood, wrestling the coverlet away from Sora and tying it around his naked waist. "Yeah," he said, shooting Sora a bright grin before walking towards the bedroom door of their shared house. "I guess I do."

He paused at the doorway, then turned back to his naked lover with a soft, strange smile. "Look under your pillow," he said. "Happy Anniversary."

Sora waited until he heard the sound of the shower running before he allowed himself to lift the pillow.

On the bed lay a small, velvet-covered box. Inside lay a ring. Engraved on the interior of this ring was a small white dove and the words _until the end of forever _circling the band. Sora noticed none of this. His attention was on the object resting alongside the little box.

A single flowering branch from an arbutus tree.


End file.
